But one day he was nearly two hours late in reaching the end of the line, where there was a tiny cross-roads hamlet. Just as the citizens were forming a posse to set out in search of him, in fear that some mishap had befallen him, Uncle Gip ambled into view. “What delayed you, Uncle Gip?” asked the postmaster. “Did you happen to an accident or did an accident happen to you?” “Nary one, nor both,” stated Uncle Gip. “But about ten o’clock this mornin’, jest before I crossed the creek, I come to where some of the boys had done left a nigger hangin’ right thar in the public road. Well, suh, my mare she got skeered and shied back, and I jest natchelly couldn’t make her go past him noways; so finally I had to tear down a panel of rail fence and lead her through the gap and lay the fence back up again and go through the woods down into the hollow and ford the creek and then tear another gap in the fence before I could get back again on the turnpike—and that was what kept me so late.” Uncle Gip paused a moment and then went on again in an aggrieved tone: “Honest, boys, it does look to me like there oughter be a law against leavin’ a nigger hangin’ in the public road.” § 296 In Part Settlement The men who earn their living on the waters and in the marshes of the Great South Bay of Long Island are a race unto themselves. They are a sturdy, independent lot, and, almost without exception, are endowed with a quaint native wit. One winter’s day a party of baymen sat around a red-hot stove in a little oyster shanty on one of the farther bars. The talk veered this way and that until finally there arose the ancient question: “What would you do if you had a million dollars?” One of the company allowed he’d buy himself an ocean-going yacht and tour the world. Another rather thought he’d adopt orphans and educate them. And so forth and so on. All this time, Old Man Banks, locally celebrated as the most shiftless man in the county, had sat in silence, rolling his quid and staring reflectively into the hot coals. “Say, Banks,” quoth one of the group, “you been keepin’ pretty quiet; what would you do if somebody was to hand you a million in cash?” The ancient deftly spat in through the open stove door before he answered: “Well,” he said, “I don’t know exactly, but I reckon I’d pay it on my debts ez fur ez it went.” § 297 The Apostolic Switch An Irishman walked up Fifth Avenue one Wednesday night, dropped into a place of worship and immediately went to sleep. After the prayer-meeting services were over the sexton came and shook him by the arm. “We are about to close up,” said that functionary, “and I’ll have to ask you to go now.” “What talk have you?” said the Irishman. “The cathedral never closes.” “This is not the cathedral,” said the sexton. “The cathedral is several blocks above here. This is a Presbyterian church.”