But ten minutes later, and right before his face, at his own front gate, Mrs. Parsons betrayed him. “I never see father so worried,” she said, “sence the time he heard about Thomas; why, he 's spent the whole afternoon as nervous as a hawk, going up on the hill with his spy-glass; and I don't feel so sure but what he was crying. He said he did n't care nothing about the boat,--'What 's that old boat!' says he; but if you boys was drownded out of her, he would n't never git over it.” At which James, being so unmasked, laughed in a shamefaced way, and shook us by the shoulders. He had a son who carried on some sort of half-maritime business on one of the wharves, in the city, and lived over his shop. When James went at intervals to visit him, he made his way at once from the railway station to the nearest wharf; then he followed the line of the water around to the shop. Where jib-booms project out over the sidewalk, one feels so thoroughly at home! From the shop he would make short adventurous excursions up Commercial Street and State Street, sometimes going no farther than the nautical-instrument store on the corner of Broad Street, sometimes venturing to Washington Street, or even moving for a short distance up or down in the current of that gay thoroughfare. He loved to comment satirically on the city, with a broad humorous sense of his own strangeness there. “The city folks don't seem to have nothing to do,” he said. “They seem to be all out, walking up and down the streets. Come noon, I thought there'd be some let-up for dinner; but they did n't seem to want nothing to eat; they kep' right on walking.” I must not leave James Parsons without telling you of two whale's teeth which stand on his parlor mantel-piece; he ornamented them himself, copying the designs from cheap foreign prints. One of them is what he calls “the meeting-house.” It is the high altar of the Cathedral of Seville. On the other is “the wild-beast tamer.” A man with a feeble, wishy-washy expression holds by each hand a fierce, but subjugated tiger. His legs dangle loosely in the air. There is nothing to suggest what upholds him in his mighty contest. II. Now we must turn from James Parsons to a man of a different type, or rather of a different variety of the same type; for they descend alike from original founders of the town, and, like most of their fellow-townsmen, are both of unqualified Pilgrim stock. To get to Captain Joseph Pelham's house, you have to drive along a range of hills for some miles, skirting the sea; then you come, half-way, to a bright modern village with trees along the main street, with houses and fences kept painted up, for the most part, but here and there relieved by an unpainted dwelling of a past generation.