“But, Sam, Aunt Lois and Aunt Nabby are both going over to Mis' Mehitabel's to tea. Now, you just come over and eat supper with us and tell us a story, do.” “Gone out to tea, be they?” said Sam, relaxing his hammering, with a brightening gleam stealing gradually across his lanky visage. “Wal, that 'ere looks like a providential openin', to be sure. Wal, I guess I 'll come. What's the use o' never havin' a good time? Ef you work yourself up into shoestrings you don't get no thanks for it, and things in this world's 'bout as broad as they is long: the women 'll scold, turn 'em which way ye will. A good mug o' cider and some cold victuals over to the Deakin's 'll kind o' comfort a feller up; and your granny she's sort o' merciful, she don't rub it into a fellow all the time like Miss Lois.” “Now, let's see, boys,” said Sam, when a comfortable meal of pork and beans had been disposed of, and a mug of cider was set down before the fire to warm. “I s'pect ye 'll like to hear a Down-East story to-night.” Of course we did, and tumbled over each other in our eagerness to get the nearest place to the narrator. Sam's method of telling a story was as leisurely as that of some modern novel-writers. He would take his time for it, and proceed by easy stages. It was like the course of a dreamy, slow-moving river through a tangled meadow-flat,--not a rush nor a bush but was reflected in it; in short, Sam gave his philosophy of matters and things in general as he went along, and was especially careful to impress an edifying moral. “Wal, ye see, boys, ye know I was born down to Newport,--there where it's all ships and shipping, and sich. My old mother she kep' a boardin'-house for sailors down there. Wal, ye see, I rolled and tumbled round the world pretty consid'able afore I got settled down here in Oldtown. “Ye see, my mother she wanted to bind me out to a blacksmith, but I kind o' sort o' didn't seem to take to it. It was kind o' hard work, and boys is apt to want to take life easy. Wal, I used to run off to the sea-shore, and lie stretched out on them rocks there, and look off on to the water; and it did use to look so sort o' blue and peaceful, and the ships come a sailin' in and out so sort o' easy and natural, that I felt as if that are 'd be jest the easiest kind o' life a fellow could have. All he had to do was to get aboard one o' them ships, and be off seekin' his fortin at t'other end o' the rainbow, where gold grows on bushes and there's valleys o' diamonds. “So, nothin' would do but I gin my old mother the slip; and away I went to sea, with my duds tied up in a han'kercher.