d special
weather points when necessary.

Captain Eli managed his domestic affairs in an entirely different way.
He kept house woman fashion--not, however, in the manner of an ordinary
woman, but after the manner of his late wife, Miranda Bunker, now dead
some seven years. Like his friend, Captain Cephas, he had had the
assistance of his female neighbors during the earlier days of his
widowerhood. But he soon found that these women did not do things as
Miranda used to do them, and, although he frequently suggested that
they should endeavor to imitate the methods of his late consort, they
did not even try to do things as she used to do them, preferring their
own ways. Therefore it was that Captain Eli determined to keep house
by himself, and to do it, as nearly as his nature would allow, as
Miranda used to do it. He swept his doors and he shook his door-mats;
he washed his paint with soap and hot water; he dusted his furniture
with a soft cloth, which he afterwards stuck behind a chest of drawers.
He made his bed very neatly, turning down the sheet at the top, and
setting the pillow upon edge, smoothing it carefully after he had done
so. His cooking was based on the methods of the late Miranda. He had
never been able to make bread rise properly, but he had always liked
ship-biscuit, and he now greatly preferred them to the risen bread made
by his neighbors. And as to coffee and the plainer articles of food
with which he furnished his table, even Miranda herself would not have
objected to them had she been alive and very hungry.

The houses of the two captains were not very far apart, and they were
good neighbors, often smoking their pipes together and talking of the
sea. But this was always on the little porch in front of Captain
Cephas's house, or by his kitchen fire in the winter. Captain Eli did
not like the smell of tobacco smoke in his house, or even in front of
it in summer-time, when the doors were open. He had no objection
himself to the odor of tobacco, but it was contrary to the principles
of woman housekeeping that rooms should smell of it, and he was always
true to those principles.

It was late in a certain December, and through the village there was a
pleasant little flutter of Christmas preparations. Captain Eli had
been up to the store, and he had stayed there a good while, warming
himself by the stove, and watching the women coming in to buy things
for Christmas. It was strange how many th