tion? His mind hung between
hope for the future and duty to his parents. Regularly every Saturday
afternoon Tite had come home, received his mother's blessing, and put
his earnings into her hands for safe-keeping. There would be an end of
this if he went to the South Sea. Then his parents were both getting
old, and would soon need a protector, and if anything serious happened
to them during his absence how could he ever forgive himself. Week after
week and month after month did Tite ponder these questions in his mind,
and still his resolution to see the world grew stronger and stronger.

It was about this time that there settled in Nyack a queer and very
inquisitive sort of man of the name of Bigelow Chapman. He was a
restless, discontented sort of man, very slender of figure, with sharp,
well-defined features, keen gray eye, and wore his dark hair long and
unkept. His manner was that of a man discontented with the world, which,
he said, needed a great deal of reforming; indeed, that it could be
reformed, ought to be reformed, and that he was the man to do it. He had
been the founder of Dogtown, Massachusetts, where he had built up a very
select community of keen-witted men and women--just to set an example to
the world of how people ought to live. Dolly Chapman, his wife, (for
what would a reformer be without a wife,) was a ponderous woman,
weighing more than two hundred pounds, and a proof that even in
matrimony the opposites meet. She was a fussy, ill-bred woman, spoke
with a strong nasal twang, and a sincere believer in all the reforms
advocated by her husband, though she differed with him on one or two
points of religion. And there was Mattie Chapman, a bright, bouncing
girl of fifteen, with rosy cheeks and fair hair, ambitious for one of
her age, and evidently inclined to make a show in the world. These
constituted the Chapman family.

Dogtown, of which I made mention, was a creation of Chapman's. With it
he was to demonstrate how the world could be reformed, and how the
prejudices were to be driven from other people's minds. Strong-minded
people from various towns in Massachusetts came and settled in Dogtown,
invested their money, were to do an equal share of work, and receive an
equal share of profits, and live together as happily as lambs. But
Dogtown did not long continue a paradise. Indeed, it soon became famous
for two things: for the name of Bigelow Chapman, and for having more
crazy and quarrelsome people