e could whip
any man in the world--even Uncle David--if he wanted to. I never
expected to see him fight, for I could not imagine anybody foolish
enough to invite his wrath.

Such a man did develop, but not until William was over sixty,
gray-haired and ill, and even then it took two strong men to engage him
fully, and when it was all over (the contest filled but a few seconds),
one assailant could not be found, and the other had to call in a doctor
to piece him together again.

William did not have a mark--his troubles began when he went home to his
quaint little old wife. In some strange way she divined that he had been
fighting, and soon drew the story from him. "William McClintock," said
she severely, "hain't you old enough to keep your temper and not go
brawling around like that and at a school meeting too!"

William hung his head. "Well, I dunno!--I suppose my dyspepsy has made
me kind o' irritable," he said by way of apology.

My father was the historian of most of these exploits on the part of his
brothers-in-law, for he loved to exalt their physical prowess at the
same time that he deplored their lack of enterprise and system. Certain
of their traits he understood well. Others he was never able to
comprehend, and I am not sure that they ever quite understood
themselves.

A deep vein of poetry, of sub-conscious celtic sadness, ran through them
all. It was associated with their love of music and was wordless. Only
hints of this endowment came out now and again, and to the day of his
death my father continued to express perplexity, and a kind of
irritation at the curious combination of bitterness and sweetness, sloth
and tremendous energy, slovenliness and exaltation which made Hugh
McClintock and his sons the jest and the admiration of those who knew
them best.

Undoubtedly to the Elwells and Dudleys, as to most of their definite,
practical, orderly and successful New England neighbors, my uncles were
merely a good-natured, easy-going lot of "fiddlers," but to me as I grew
old enough to understand them, they became a group of potential poets,
bards and dreamers, inarticulate and moody. They fell easily into somber
silence. Even Frank, the most boisterous and outspoken of them all,
could be thrown into sudden melancholy by a melody, a line of poetry or
a beautiful landscape.

The reason for this praise of their quality, if the reason needs to be
stated, lies in my feeling of definite indebtedness to them. T