In the course of the evening I began to feel the potency of the clam which I had eaten, and I was obliged to confess to our host that I was no tougher than the cat he told of; but he answered, that he was a plain-spoken man, and he could tell me that it was all imagination. At any rate, it proved an emetic in my case, and I was made quite sick by it for a short time, while he laughed at my expense. I was pleased to read afterward, in Mourt’s Relation of the landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor, these words: “We found great muscles (the old editor says that they were undoubtedly sea-clams) and very fat and full of sea-pearl; but we could not eat them, for they made us all sick that did eat, as well sailors as passengers, ... but they were soon well again.” It brought me nearer to the Pilgrims to be thus reminded by a similar experience that I was so like them. Moreover, it was a valuable confirmation of their story, and I am prepared now to believe every word of Mourt’s Relation. I was also pleased to find that man and the clam lay still at the same angle to one another. But I did not notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I must have swallowed it. I have since dug these clams on a flat in the Bay and observed them. They could squirt full ten feet before the wind, as appeared by the marks of the drops on the sand. “Now I’m going to ask you a question,” said the old man, “and I don’t know as you can tell me; but you are a learned man, and I never had any learning, only what I got by natur.”—It was in vain that we reminded him that he could quote Josephus to our confusion.—“I’ve thought, if I ever met a learned man I should like to ask him this question. Can you tell me how _Axy_ is spelt, and what it means? _Axy_,” says he; “there’s a girl over here is named _Axy_. Now what is it? What does it mean? Is it Scripture? I’ve read my Bible twenty-five years over and over, and I never came across it.” “Did you read it twenty-five years for this object.’” I asked. “Well, _how_ is it spelt? Wife, how is it spelt?” She said: “It is in the Bible; I’ve seen it.” “Well, how do you spell it?” “I don’t know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh,—Achseh.” “Does that spell Axy? Well, do _you_ know what it means?” asked he, turning to me. “No,” I replied, “I never heard the sound before.” “There was a schoolmaster down here once, and they asked him what it meant, and he said it had no more meaning than a bean-pole.” I told him that I held the same opinion with the schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster myself, and had had strange names to deal with. I also heard of such names as Zoleth, Beriah, Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, hereabouts.