The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eli, by Heman White Chaplin

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Title: Eli
First published in the "Century Magazine"

Author: Heman White Chaplin

Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELI ***

Produced by David Widger

ELI

By Heman White Chaplin

1887

First published in the "Century Magazine."

I.

Under a boat, high and dry at low tide, on the beach, John Wood was
seated in the sand, sheltered from the sun in the boat's shadow,
absorbed in the laying on of verdigris. The dull, worn color was rapidly
giving place to a brilliant, shining green. Occasionally a scraper,
which lay by, was taken up to remove the last trace of a barnacle.

It was Wood's boat, but he was not a boatman; he painted cleverly, but
he was not a painter. He kept the brown store under the elms of the main
street, now hot and still, where at this-moment his blushing sister was
captivating the heart of an awkward farmer's boy as she sold him a pair
of striped suspenders.

As the church clock struck the last of twelve decided blows, three
children came rushing out of the house on the bank above the beach. It
was one of those deceptive New England cottages, weather-worn without,
but bright and bountifully home-like within,--with its trim parlor,
proud of a cabinet organ; with its front hall, now cooled by the light
sea-breeze drifting through the blind-door, where a tall clock issued
its monotonous call to a siesta on the rattan lounge; with its spare
room, open now, opposite the parlor, and now, too, drawing in the salt
air through close-shut blinds, in anticipation of the joyful arrival
this evening of Sister Sarah, with her little brood, from the city.

The children scampered across the road, and then the eldest hushed the
others and sent a little brother ahead to steal, barefoot, along the
shining sea-weed to his father.

The plotted surprise appeared to succeed completely. The painter was
seized by the ears from behind, and captured.

"Guess who 's here, or you can't get up," said the infant captor.

"It 's Napoleon Bonaparte; don't joggle," said