A characteristic story is told of a jury case at Barnstable. A man was tried for a violent assault. In argument, his counsel, who was from an inland county, alluded to the fact that the injured person had not called a doctor to wounds which he had described as serious, and based the defense very largely upon this. He saw no possible answer to his argument. But he did not know his ground. Judge Marston, the district attorney, afterward attorney-general of the State, was born and bred upon Cape Cod of a family of Barnstable lawyers, and he had his ready answer. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you have heard the plausible argument of my ingenious young legal friend, who has come from a distant city to enlighten your benighted understandings, and you see through his sophistry. You all know Captain ----, the father of the victim of this assault; you know what our young friend, with all his learning, has plainly never discovered, that a man is not master of a ship for thirty years without learning how to deal with wounds, and you know well that there is no doctor on Cape Cod who can heal cuts and bruises better than the captain can. Why should he have sent for a doctor?” The mariner’s habit of thought appears in everything. A few years ago, the school committee in one of the towns decided on a change of geographies, and the superintendent of schools was besieged by publishers’ agents. One of them called upon him and undertook to explain the features of his book. “I don’t think you need to tell me anything about geography,” said the superintendent, who was an old sea-captain, “but I will teach you something. Here is a picture of what you call a smack fishing for mackerel, and you’ve got her on the port tack, with sheets hauled aft, making about seven knots an hour. Now, in a mackerel boat they keep the kit on the port side, and she lays off to fish on the starboard tack, with the sheets off, the peak of the foresail slacked down, and the tiller lashed hard down.” Not long after, the publishers wrote and asked him for a correct drawing, and he had a rough sketch made by a sailor who had a knack with the pencil, and sent it to them.