ession.
He got thorough, however, by dint of plausible manners. He
was a very honest fellow in other respects, but he got the
habit of incurring debts which he could not pay. Then he
took to drinking hard, and finally went to New York, and died
after a career of dissipation. But everybody liked him. Drunk
or sober, he was the best company in the world, full of anecdote
flavored with a shrewd and not ill-natured wit. There was a
manufacturer in a village near Worcester who had failed in
business owing large debts all about. He was a man of enormous
bulk, the fattest man in the whole region round-about, weighing
considerably over three hundred. He left the State to avoid
his creditors, and dwelt in New York, keeping himself out
of their reach. At last it was discovered by a creditor that
he used to come to Worcester in the train which arrived from
New York on the Western Railroad shortly before midnight Saturday,
go over to his old home, which was not far off, stay there
Sunday, when he was exempt from arrest, and take the cars
Sunday night at about the same hour for New York. Accordingly
old Jonathan Day, a veteran deputy-sheriff, armed with an
execution, lay in wait for him one dark and stormy Saturday
night at the little old wooden depot of the Western Railroad,
some hundred or two feet from Grafton Street. The train
came in, and the debtor got out. The old General laid his
hands on him, and told him he was his prisoner. He protested
and demurred and begged, making all manner of promises to
pay the debt if the officer would not take him to jail. But
Day was inexorable. Meantime the train had gone on, and the
keeper of the depot had put out the lights and gone off. There
was nobody left in the darkness but the officer and the debtor.
"Well," said the fellow, "if you are going to take me to jail
you must carry me. I won't walk." So he sat himself down
on the platform. Day tried to persuade him to walk, and then
tugged and tugged at his collar, but without the slightest
effect. He might as well have tried to move a mountain. He
waited in a good deal of perplexity, and at last he heard
the rattle of wheels on Grafton Street, and gave a loud yell
for assistance. The owner of the wagon came to the scene.
General Day demanded his help as one of the posse comitatus.
But it was as hard to the two to move the obstruction as it
had been for the old General alone. So the General put the
debtor in charge of