cal-instrument
store on the corner of Broad Street, sometimes venturing to Washington
Street, or even moving for a short distance up or down in the current of
that gay thoroughfare. He loved to comment satirically on the city, with
a broad humorous sense of his own strangeness there. "The city folks
don't seem to have nothing to do," he said. "They seem to be all out,
walking up and down the streets. Come noon, I thought there'd be some
let-up for dinner; but they did n't seem to want nothing to eat; they
kep' right on walking."

I must not leave James Parsons without telling you of two whale's teeth
which stand on his parlor mantel-piece; he ornamented them himself,
copying the designs from cheap foreign prints. One of them is what he
calls "the meeting-house." It is the high altar of the Cathedral of
Seville. On the other is "the wild-beast tamer." A man with a feeble,
wishy-washy expression holds by each hand a fierce, but subjugated
tiger. His legs dangle loosely in the air. There is nothing to suggest
what upholds him in his mighty contest.

II.

Now we must turn from James Parsons to a man of a different type, or
rather of a different variety of the same type; for they descend
alike from original founders of the town, and, like most of their
fellow-townsmen, are both of unqualified Pilgrim stock.

To get to Captain Joseph Pelham's house, you have to drive along a range
of hills for some miles, skirting the sea; then you come, half-way, to a
bright modern village with trees along the main street, with houses and
fences kept painted up, for the most part, but here and there relieved
by an unpainted dwelling of a past generation.

Here you have an option. You may either pursue your road through the
high-lying prosperous street, with peeps of salt water to the right,
or you may turn sharply off at a little store and descend to the lower
road. It is always a struggle to choose.

The road to the beach descends a sharp, gravelly hill, and crosses a
bridge. Then you come out on a waste of salt-marsh, threaded by the
creek, broken by wild, fantastic sand-hills, grown over by beach-grass
which will cut your fingers like a knife. You drive close along
the white, precipitous beach; you pass the long, shaky pier, with
half-decayed fish-houses at the other end, and picturesque heaps of
fish-cars, seines, and barrels. Then the road, following the shore a
little longer, climbs the hill and enters the woods. Two miles