CAPT. OBED PELTON ON COVETOUSNESS

EEN a dreadful wet day for Ezry Perkins' funeral, ain't it? Guess it don't make much difference to him now, though

some folks think he'd be glad of a little water by this time."

Having delivered himself thus Capt.

Obed Pelton looked around on his audience gathered about the stove in the cabin of the Jane L. As I was merely a stranger, I wisely kept silence.

"He was a dreadful graspin' man, was Ezry." ventured Eph, first mate, cook and crew.

"Wall, I guess," rejoined the captain, he was so durn graspin' that he never used to give me an 'thin' but salt cod and weevilly dog biscuit the summer I went on a cruise with him nigh onto fifty year ago. Never went agin, you can just figgur on that. My mother was Ezry's cousin, that's how I come to go. They used to tell me I was goin' to be graspin' like the Perkinses, but I got cured one day 'bout this time o' year, me and Lish Peters. You remember Lish, Eph; his widder lives over to the P'int now."

Eph and I hitched our chairs closer to the little stove for a cold northeast storm was raging over head, though it was scarcely the middle of September.

"Yes, as I was a sayin', I got cured good an' plenty. This storm makes me think of it, though it don't begin to rain as hard as it did thet day. Me an' Lish were partners, and used to go out fishin' in the dory we found on the beach the next morning after the Mandy Cutter went aground off

Laif Rock. Never could git another like her; built of oak with cedar ribs; just couldn't tip her over.

"Must have been about this time o' year,

continued

the captain, as he bit off a generous hunk of tobacco, ''that we was fishin' for squit about two miles out. It was one of them drizzly days when it don't rain much, but jest keeps a tryin' to. However, the fish do bite fine on such days, so Lish and me set out. We had the biggest luck you ever saw; just couldn't pull 'em in fast 'nough. Bime by Lish's lines got all tangled up in mine 'count of pulling in so fast, so we had to stop an' straighten things out.

"How many yer caught?' says I. One forty-two', says Lish. 'An' a hundred an' thirty-five makes two seventyIn an hour and a half, too, that's fairly good.'

seven.

"I reckon we better make fer home' says Lish, when we got untangled. See that black cloud off thar, that means it's goin' to rain like tarnation, and mebbe there'll be wind along of it, too.'

'Easy now, Lish', says I. Don't you git in a hurry. It's been black off thar all day and we'll never git another streak o' luck like this till we're gray as wharf rats.'

"Well, the upshot of it was, we stayed, and kep' a haulin' in them squit. Pretty soon it begun to rain, easy-like at fust, and then a little harder, an' then the wind begun to blow. Lish and me got anxious and quit fishin'. Lish put up the sail, while I wound up the lines and stowed away the bait. But we hadn't much more'n got steerage way when it begun to rain like all possessed. I've seen some tolerable hard storms in my day, but I never see it rain like that, and I was in one o' them tropical rains once, the winter I sailed

as mate with Si Seaver in his ole molasses schooner.

No,

sir, I never want to be out in another rain like that. We hadn't gone quarter of a mile 'fore I swan, we couldn't tell which was salt water and which was fresh. It was just like sailin' in one o' them submarine things that the Japs have been usin' to send the Russian ships to kingdom come. I bailed for dear life an' Lish sailed her in. She was about half full o' water all the time, an' the wust of it was those blame squit begun to jump overboard. One six-pounder hit me in the wind when I was leanin' over a bailin'. If Lish hadn't tied the tiller rope and bailed till I got to breathin' straight agin, I reckon we'd a' sunk.

66

'Lish,' says I, 'if we can make the P'int, we'll have to beach her, if we're goin' to save any o' these fish.'

"Lish nodded, and I was so paralysed from bailin' I couldn't say any more.

"Sometime a little later I felt her grate on the beach and Lish called out to me to jump out with a rope and haul her ashore. When we got her all tied to a big rook we hustled over to town an' got some baskets for those fish. When we was stowin' of 'em away, we counted 'em, and sure's you're born, there was just two hundred and seventy-seven of 'em. When I see that I was dumbfounded.

''Lish', says I, 'it's a jedgment on me for bein' so graspin'. The Lord has spared my life,' says I, 'an' I'm not agoin' to tempt Him any more;' an' from that day to this I've tried to be content with what I had.

"Now, boys," said Capt. Obed gravely, but with a sly twinkle in his eye, "the stars are beginnin' to show. I reckon we better turn in so's to be ready for an early start in the morning". A. H. B.

Williams of Yesterday

I. WILLIAMS IN 1830

HE frontispiece this month shows a sketch of the college at an early date in its history, which, although the perspective and relative position of the buildings is faulty, is valuable owing to the fact that it is the only view of old East College in existence.

On

At the extreme left of the print is the Meeting-house, typical of its generation in its severe lines and its sternness. the hill, West College overshadows the President's house. To Griffin Hall people pointed with great admiration and pride in those early days as their new chapel. At the right are East College and the Astronomical Observatory. In October 1904, in the pages of this magazine, When the College was Young treated of West College, and in April 1902 The Story of a College Building told in some detail of Griffin Hall. A brief paragraph on the old East College may prove to be of some interest here.

They tell us the contractor made 300,000 bricks on the clay flats back of the President's house for the walls of the new building and that the commonwealth granted for its construction two townships in Maine which, in a sale, yielded $10,000. Here were the Senior and Junior recitation rooms; the rest of the building was devoted to chambers, and these latter were considered palatial indeed, for each study had two separate bedrooms and was warmed by a fireplace.