ever seen. His one neat little
living room was full of them--beautiful, hideous or quaint as the case
might be, and almost all having some weird or exciting story attached.

Mother and I had a beautiful summer at Golden Gate. We lived the life
of two children with Uncle Jesse as a playmate. Our housekeeping was
of the simplest description and we spent our hours rambling along the
shores, reading on the rocks or sailing over the harbour in Uncle
Jesse's trim little boat. Every day we loved the simple-souled, true,
manly old sailor more and more. He was as refreshing as a sea breeze,
as interesting as some ancient chronicle. We never tired of listening
to his stories, and his quaint remarks and comments were a continual
delight to us. Uncle Jesse was one of those interesting and rare
people who, in the picturesque phraseology of the shore folks, "never
speak but they say something." The milk of human kindness and the
wisdom of the serpent were mingled in Uncle Jesse's composition in
delightful proportions.

One day he was absent all day and returned at nightfall.

"Took a tramp back yander." "Back yander" with Uncle Jesse might mean
the station hamlet or the city a hundred miles away or any place
between--"to carry Mr. Kimball a mess of trout. He likes one
occasional and it's all I can do for a kindness he did me once. I
stayed all day to talk to him. He likes to talk to me, though he's an
eddicated man, because he's one of the folks that's _got_ to talk or
they're miserable, and he finds listeners scarce 'round here. The
folks fight shy of him because they think he's an infidel. He ain't
_that_ far gone exactly--few men is, I reckon--but he's what you might
call a heretic. Heretics are wicked but they're mighty interesting.
It's just that they've got sorter lost looking for God, being under
the impression that He's hard to find--which He ain't, never. Most of
'em blunder to Him after a while I guess. I don't think listening to
Mr. Kimball's arguments is likely to do _me_ much harm. Mind you, I
believe what I was brought up to believe. It saves a vast of
trouble--and back of it all, God is good. The trouble with Mr. Kimball
is, he's a leetle _too_ clever. He thinks he's bound to live up to
his cleverness and that it's smarter to thrash out some new way of
getting to heaven than to go by the old track the common, ignorant
folks is travelling. But he'll get there sometime all right and then
he'll laugh at himself."