th Jim Campbell's visit
to me here in Bayport; with the curious way in which the letter reached
us, after crossing the ocean twice. Any one of these might serve as a
beginning--but which? I made I don't know how many attempts, but not
one was satisfactory. I, who had begun I am ashamed to tell you how many
stories--yes, and had finished them and seen them in print as well--was
stumped at the very beginning of this one. Like Sim Phinney I had
worked at my job "a long spell" and "cal'lated" I knew it, but here
was something I didn't know. As Sim said, when he faced his problem, "I
couldn't seem to get steerage way on her."

Simeon, you see--He is Angeline Phinney's second cousin and lives in
the third house beyond the Holiness Bethel on the right-hand side of the
road--Simeon has "done carpentering" here in Bayport all his life. He
built practically every henhouse now gracing or disgracing the backyards
of our village. He is our "henhouse specialist," so to speak. He has
even been known to boast of his skill. "Henhouses!" snorted Sim; "land
of love! I can build a henhouse with my eyes shut. Nowadays when another
one of them foolheads that's been readin' 'How to Make a Million Poultry
Raisin'' in the Farm Gazette comes to me and says 'Henhouse,' I say,
'Yes sir. Fifteen dollars if you pay me cash now and a hundred and
fifteen if you want to wait and pay me out of your egg profits. That's
all there is to it.'"

And yet, when Captain Darius Nickerson, who made the most of his money
selling fifty-foot lots of sand, beachgrass and ticks to summer
people for bungalow sites--when Captain Darius, grown purse-proud and
vainglorious, expressed a desire for a henhouse with a mansard roof and
a cupola, the latter embellishments to match those surmounting his own
dwelling, Simeon was set aback with his canvas flapping. At the end of
a week he had not driven a nail. "Godfrey's mighty!" he is reported to
have exclaimed. "I don't know whether to build the average cupola and
trust to a hen's fittin' it, or take an average hen and build a cupola
round her. Maybe I'll be all right after I get started, but it's where
to start that beats me."

Where to start beat me, also, and it might be beating me yet, if I
hadn't dropped in at the post-office and heard Asaph Tidditt telling
a story to the group around the stove. After he had finished, and,
the mail being sorted, we were walking homeward together, I asked a
question.

"Asaph," said I,