ic
quaver in it: "Like as de parched an' weary traveller hangs his harp
upon de winder, an' sighs for oysters in de desert, so I longs to res'
my soul an' my foot in Mass'chusetts;" and they were so delighted with
him that they invited him on the spot to go home with them, and took
up a collection to pay his fare, and so he was a public character. As
for his occupation--when the census-taker, with a wink to the boys in
the store, had asked him what it was, he had said, in that same odd
tone: "Putties up glass a little--white-washes a little--" and, when
the man had made a show of writing all that down, "preaches a little."
He might have said "preaches a big," for you could hear him half a
mile away.

The foreman was a retired sea-captain. "Good cap'n--Cap'n Thomas,"
one of his neighbors had said of him. "Allers gits good ships--never
hez to go huntin' 'round for a vessel. But it is astonishin' what
differences they is! Now there's Cap'n A. K. P. Bassett, down to the
West Harbor. You let it git 'round that Cap'n A. K. P. is goin' off on
a Chiny voyage, and you'll see half a dozen old shays to onct, hitched
all along his fence of an arternoon, and wimmen inside the house, to
git Cap'n A. K. P. to take their boys. But you let Cap'n Thomas give
out that he wants boys, and he hez to glean 'em--from the poor-house,
and from step-mothers, and where he can: the wimmen knows! Still," he
added, "Cap'n Thomas's a good cap'n. I've nothin' to say ag'in him.
He's smart!"

* * * * *

"Gentlemen," said the foreman, when the officer, at last, had securely
locked them in, "shall we go through the formality of a ballot? If the
case were a less serious one, we might have rendered a verdict in our
seats."

"What's the use foolin' 'round ballotin'?" said a thick-set butcher.
"Ain't we all o' one mind?"

"It is for you to say, gentlemen," said the foreman. "I shouldn't want
to have it go abroad that we had not acted formally, if there was any
one disposed to cavil."

"Mr. Speaker," said George Washington, rising and standing in the
attitude of Webster, "I rises to appoint to order. We took ballast in
de prior cases, and why make flesh of one man an' a fowl of another?"

"Very well," said the foreman, a trifle sharply. "'The longest way
round is the shortest way home.'"

Twelve slips of paper were handed out, to be indorsed guilty, "for
form." They were collected in a hat and the foreman told them