"
We shook hands, and he took each of us by the arm and piloted us back
to the piazza, like a tug with a couple of coal barges. He pulled up a
chair, crossed his legs on the rail, reached into the for'ard hatch of
his coat and brought out a cigar case.
"Smoke up," he says. We done it--I holding my hat to shut off the wind,
while Jonadab used up two cards of matches getting the first light. When
we got the cigars to going finally, the feller says:
"My name's Brown--Peter T. Brown. I read about your falling heir to this
estate, Cap'n Wixon, in a New Bedford paper. I happened to be in New
Bedford then, representing the John B. Wilkins Unparalleled All Star
Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ten Nights in a Bar-room Company. It isn't my
reg'lar line, the show bus'ness, but it produced the necessary 'ham and'
every day and the excelsior sleep inviter every night, so--but never
mind that. Soon as I read the paper I came right down to look at the
property. Having rubbered, back I go to Orham to see you. Your handsome
and talented daughter says you are over here. That'll be about all--here
I am. Now, then, listen to this."
He went under his hatches again, rousted out a sheet of paper, unfolded
it and read something like this--I know it by heart:
"The great sea leaps and splashes before you as it leaped and splashed
in the old boyhood days. The sea wind sings to you as it sang of old.
The old dreams come back to you, the dreams you dreamed as you slumbered
upon the cornhusk mattress in the clean, sweet little chamber of the old
home.
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