h the most amusing good-humor and attention. It is his duty to see
that the skiffs are not jammed under the wharf on the rising tide; to
sweep out the "Annie" when she comes in, and to set her cabin to rights;
to set away the dishes after meals, and to feed the chickens. Aside from
a few such tasks, his time in summer is his own. The rest of the year he
goes to the "primary," and serves to keep the whole room in a state of
mirth. He has the happy gift that to put every one in high spirits he
has only to be present. Such an incessant flow of life you rarely see.
His manners are good, and he comes honestly by them.

There is an amusing union in him of the baby and the man. While the
children of his age at the summer hotel walk about for the most part
with their nurses, he is turned loose upon the shore, and has been,
from his cradle. He can dive and swim and paddle and float and "go
steamboat." He can row a boat that is not too heavy, and up to the limit
of his strength he can steer a sail-boat with substantial skill. He
knows the currents, the tides, and the shoals about his shore, and the
nearer landmarks. He knows that to find the threadlike entrance to
the bay you bring the flag-staff over Cart-wright's barn. He has vague
theories of his own as to the annual shifting of the channel. He knows
where to take the city children to look for tinkle-shells and mussels.
He knows what winds bring in the scallops from their beds. He knows
where to dig for clams, and where to tread for quahaugs without
disturbing the oysters. He has a good deal of fragmentary lore of the
sea.

Every morning you will hear his cry, a sort of yodel, or bird-call,
peculiar to him, with which he bursts forth upon the world. Then you
will hear, perhaps, loud peals of laughter at something that has excited
his sense of the absurd,--contagious laughter, full of innocent fun.

Then he will appear, perhaps, with his wooden dinner-bucket,--he is
going off with his grandfather for the day,--and will yodel to the old
man as a signal to make haste. Then you will hear him consulting with
some one upon the weather.

All this time he will be going; through various evolutions, swinging in
the hammock, sitting on the fence, opening his bucket to show you what
he has to eat, closing the bucket and sitting down upon the cover,
or turning somersaults upon the grass. Then he will encamp under an
apple-tree to wait until his grandfather appears, enlivening the time b