more and
you come out to fields with mossy fences, and occasional houses.

The houses begin to be more frequent. All at once you enter the main
street of W------.

In a moment you see that you have come into a new atmosphere. There is a
large modern church among the older ones. There are large, fine houses,
some old-fashioned, others new. By some miraculous intervention Queen
Anne has not as yet made her appearance. There are handsome, well-filled
stores, going into no little refinement in stock. There is, of course,
a small brick library, built by the bounty of a New Yorker who was born
here. There is a brick national bank, and a face brick block occupied
above by Freemasons, orders of Red Men, Knights Templars, and the Pool
of Siloam Lodge, I. O. O. F., and below by a savings bank and a local
marine insurance company.

It is here that we shall find Captain Joseph Pelham. If a stranger has
occasion to inquire for the leading men of the place he is always first
referred to him. It is he who heads every list and is the chairman
of every meeting. When a certain public man, commanding but a small
following here, appeared, upon his campaign tour, and found no one
to escort him to the platform and preside, so that he was obliged to
justify his appearance here by the Scripture passage, "They that are
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick;" at the moment
of entering the hall, closely packed with curious opponents, disposed
perhaps to be derisive when the situation for the visitor was
embarrassing in the extreme,--it was Captain Joseph Pelham who, though
the bitterest opponent of them all, rose from his seat, gave the speaker
his arm, escorted him to the platform, presented him with grave courtesy
to the audience, and sat beside him through the entire discourse.

While Captain Pelham continued to go to sea, and after that, until he
was made president of the insurance company, he lived a mile or two out
of the town, in a house he had inherited. It is picturesquely situated,
on a bare hill, with a wide view of the inland and the ocean. As
you look down from its south windows, the cluster of houses nestling
together at the shore below stand sharply out against the water. It is
one of those white houses common in our older towns,--two-storied, long
on the street, with the front door in the middle. Of the interior it is
enough to say that its owner had sailed for thirty years to Hong-Kong,
Calcutta and Madras. It h