he scattered his
superfluous clothing, books, and papers over his rooms in "much-admired
disorder." He gave the freedom of his house to the boys and girls of
his neighborhood, who, presuming upon his good nature, laughed at her
remonstrances and threats as they chased each other up and down the
nicely-polished stairway. Worse than all, he was proof against the
vituperations and reproaches with which she indirectly assailed him from
the recesses of her kitchen. He smoked his pipe and dozed over his
newspaper as complacently as ever, while his sins of omission and
commission were arrayed against him.

Peewawkin had always the reputation of a healthy town: and if it had
been otherwise, Dr. Singletary was the last man in the world to
transmute the aches and ails of its inhabitants into gold for his own
pocket. So, at the age of sixty, he was little better off, in point of
worldly substance, than when he came into possession of the small
homestead of his father. He cultivated with his own hands his corn-
field and potato-patch, and trimmed his apple and pear trees, as well
satisfied with his patrimony as Horace was with his rustic Sabine villa.
In addition to the care of his homestead and his professional duties,
he had long been one of the overseers of the poor and a member of the
school committee in his town; and he was a sort of standing reference in
all disputes about wages, boundaries, and cattle trespasses in his
neighborhood. He had, nevertheless, a good deal of leisure for reading,
errands of charity, and social visits. He loved to talk with his
friends, Elder Staples, the minister, Deacon Warner, and Skipper Evans.
He was an expert angler, and knew all the haunts of pickerel and trout
for many miles around. His favorite place of resort was the hill back
of his house, which afforded a view of the long valley of the Tocketuck
and the great sea. Here he would sit, enjoying the calm beauty of the
landscape, pointing out to me localities interesting from their
historical or traditional associations, or connected in some way with
humorous or pathetic passages of his own life experience. Some of these
autobiographical fragments affected me deeply. In narrating them he
invested familiar and commonplace facts with something of the
fascination of romance. "Human life," he would say, "is the same
everywhere. If we could but get at the truth, we should find that all
the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare have been r