man I mean is the woman
John Mennear married, or thought he married; the woman that aforetime
had kept her own counsel though he caught and kissed her in a dimmety
corner of the street; the woman that swore to love, honour and obey
him, not she that tongue-drove him to the 'King of Prussia,' with his
own good liquor to keep him easy at home. Drunk he must have been to
mistake the one for t'other; and I'm willing to fine him for
drunkenness. But cite that other woman here before you ask me for a
separation order, and I'll grant it; and I'll warrant when John sees
you side by side, he won't oppose it."

Here and there our Mayor had his detractors, no doubt. What public
man has not? He incurred the reproach of pride, for instance, when
he appeared, one wet day, carrying an umbrella, the first ever seen
in Troy. A Guernsey merchant had presented him with this novelty
(I may whisper here that our Mayor did something more than connive at
the free trade) and patently it kept off the rain. But would it not
attract the lightning? Many, even among his well-wishers, shook
their heads. For their part they would have accepted the gift, but
it should never have seen the light: they would have locked it away
in their chests.

Oddly enough the Mayor nourished his severest censor in his own
household. The rest of us might quote his wit, his wisdom, might
defer to him as a being, if not superhuman, at least superlative
among men; but Cai Tamblyn would have none of it. He had found one
formula to answer all our praises.

"_Him_? Why, I knawed him when he was _so_ high!"

Nor would he hesitate, in the Mayor's presence, from translating it
into the second person.

"_You_? Why, I knawed you when you was _so_ high!"

Yet the Mayor retained him in his service, which sufficiently proves
his magnanimity.

He could afford to be magnanimous, being adored.

Who but he could have called a public meeting and persuaded the
ladies of the town to enroll themselves in a brigade and patrol the
cliffs in red cloaks during harvest, that the French, if perchance
they approached our shores, might mistake them for soldiery? It was
pretty, I tell you, to walk the coast-track on a warm afternoon and
pass these sentinels two hundred yards apart, each busy with her
knitting.

Of all the marks left on our town by Major Hymen's genius, the
Port Hospital, or the idea of it, proved (as it deserved) to
be the most enduring. The Looe Volunte