[Illustration: Music fragment: "'My days are as the grass--'"] "Sh!" said Mrs. Kobbe, deftly getting audience at his ear. "Ladies an' gentlemen an' childern," said Captain Pharo, taking his place beside the flag; "we've h'isted of 'er, an' here she blows"--he put his hand in his pocket for his pipe, and drew from his vest a match. Mrs. Kobbe coughed loudly, and even shook her head at him: he put them back. "We have h'isted on 'er," he continued, "an' here she blows!" Mrs. Kobbe's cough of deeper warning and high-mounting blushes on his account nerved him. "We've h'isted of 'er," he shouted with desperate defiance, "and thar she blows, don't she, by clam! on the full, the free, the glorious, an' the ever-lastin' h'ist!" A sturdy round of applause was not wanting, but on this point Mrs. Kobbe was visibly sceptical: she received her lord with sniffs of disdain. "'The full, the free, the glorious, an' the ever-lastin' h'ist'!" said she. "Where was you eddicated, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe?" "It don't make but darn little difference whar ye've been eddicated," replied Captain Pharo, "when ye're tryin' to make a speech, an' one o' them devil-fish boys goes around behind ye an' snaps a live lobster onto the slack o' yer britches!" Giggles from a school of sculpins safe hidden somewhere lent further aggravation to the dilemma. "Jakie Teel an' Pharie Kobbe, Junior, 'll come to judgment," cried Mrs. Kobbe, in a loud voice, "'specially Pharie Kobbe as soon 's ever he gits home," whereat giggling from that miscreant quarter ceased, and she relieved her lord of his painful embarrassment. But at this point a new and surprising development arose. The Basin horses attached to some wholesale herring-boxes, extemporized as sleighs, were driven to the scene. Captain Pharo, with heart-whole joy at the sight, lit his pipe and declared, with now beaming countenance: "It has been arranged, to crown this happy 'casion, for all our unmarried Basins over sixteen year o' age, not forgettin' widders under forty, to have a sleigh ride. Elder Skates'll reel off the names, accordin' to which you can pile yerselves in accordin'ly, two 'n' two, side by side, thus 'n' so, male an' female, created He them!" Flushed with inspiration, Captain Pharo glanced triumphantly at his wife, who, at this more than Pentateuchal illustration, refused to sneer. So absorbed was I in watching the gleeful embarkation, and so little dreamed I of being considered in a case like this, it had not even occurred to me that I too was an unmarried Basin widely over sixteen years of age, and yet a little under forty, when-- To the choicest seat in the very largest herring-box, the back of which was stylishly bedizened by the splendors of the star bedquilt, I heard my own name called: "Major Paul Henry and the Widder Rafe!" Who and where was the Widow Rafe? Lo! Vesty stepped out. To be sure--the formal, the flag-raising, the "Occasion" name of Vesty!