“Across the hall I gayly skipped, And soon was for the cruise equipped.” Then follows the drive, the arrival, and the attempt to cut the stern old cedar trunk with a dull saw,―― “Cousin Thomas worked with desperation, Until he was in a profuse perspiration,” and finally secured the trophy here exhibited. But these stray couplets give a very inadequate idea of the poem as delivered by its author; and he who visits Nantucket and does not hear it has for the rest of his life a lost opportunity to lament. Just at the close of the recital the poetess fixed her eye steadily upon a figure beside one of the windows, and sternly inquired: “Is that woman sick? Why don’t somebody see to her?” It was true that the culprit, overcome by the heat of the room, the excitement of the narrative, and possibly certain ancient and fish-like odors connected with the marine specimens, had fainted a little; but was speedily recovered by the usual remedies, prominent among which in those days is a disinclination to have one’s crimps spoiled by the application of water; and the incident was made more memorable by the valedictory of the hostess: “Now, if any of you want to come in again while you stay on the island you can, without paying anything; and if I don’t remember you, just say, ‘I was here the day the woman fainted,’ and I shall know it’s all right.” And we heard that the experiment was tried and succeeded. As the party left the house the señor lingered to say: “We are going up to the old windmill, Aunty. Didn’t it belong to your family once?” “I should say it did, Sammy. They wanted a windmill and didn’t know how to make one: and they got an off-islander, name of Wilbur, to make it, and like fools gave him the money beforehand. He went back to the continent for something――nails maybe, or maybe idees――and carried the money with him; some pirate or other got wind of it, and the first thing they knew down here, the man was robbed and murdered there on Cape Cod. That didn’t put up the windmill though, and the women had got almost tired grinding their samp and meal in those old stone mortars, or even a handmill; so some of the folks spoke to my grandfather, Elisha Macy, about it, and he thought it over, and finally went to bed and dreamed just how to build it, and the next day got up and built it. That’s the story of _that_, my dear.” “A regular case of revelation, wasn’t it?” suggested the señor with a twinkle in his eye; to which the hostess rather sharply replied: “I don’t profess to know much about revealation, and I don’t surmise you know much more, Sammy; but that’s how the windmill was built.”