I was one day at Plymouth Rock with Wm. E. Forster, who had recently distinguished himself by his efforts in parliament in favor of the educational bill, when Mr. Watson came up the wharf with a kinnerkin in one hand, and a pair of chickens in the other. I introduced him to Mr. Foster as a member of the English parliament, and he asked if the gentleman was Wm. E. Forster—Forster, with an “r,” and when assured that he was, he said, “I am glad to see you. I know all about you, that last education speech you made hit the nail on the head.” The two then engaged in conversation on English affairs, and after they separated I pointed out to Mr. Forster the island on which Mr. Watson was born, and had always lived, having had only a schooling of three months in all his life. “You astonish me,” he replied, adding, “why that man knows more about English politics than three-fourths of the members of parliament.” To give him his full name, Edward Winslow Watson, son of John and Lucia Marston Watson, was born December 17, 1797, and died where he was born, August 8, 1876. His funeral was unique and impressive. The green bottom lap streak boat in which many hundreds of times he had stemmed the winds and tide was the catafalque which bore him to town, while the boats of his island and Saquish and Gurnet friends, like white-winged angels, attended him to his rest. In closing this notice of my friend I will quote from his little book of poems lines illustrating the serious thought which his mind evolved from the most trifling incidents of life: “Dear Jennie, that nice cranberry tart, You gave to me bedecked with paste, Lies like a bleeding, broken heart, Whose inner life has run to waste. You placed it on the basket top, In paper coverings still it lay, Mid rolling seas a lurch it got, And bled its inner life away. Its fate, how like the buoyant heart That o’er life’s billowy ocean springs Till disappointment tips the bark, And overstrained, snap go the strings.” CHAPTER XXV.