spending several thousand dollars
damming up a small stream, in order that the children might have a place
to skate. He created a library where all might obtain suitable reading,
particularly the young.

On New Year's morning it was his custom to visit all the poor and
bereaved and lonely in Noank, taking a great dray full of presents and
leaving a little something with his greetings and a pleasant handshake
at every door. The lonely rich as well as the lonely poor were included,
for he was certain, as he frequently declared, that the rich could be
lonely too.

He once told his brother-in-law that one New Year's Day a voice called
to him in church: "Elihu Burridge, how about the lonely rich and poor of
Noank?" "Up I got," he concluded, "and from that day to this I have
never neglected them."

When any one died who had a little estate to be looked after for the
benefit of widows or orphans, Burridge was the one to take charge of it.
People on their deathbeds sent for him, and he always responded, taking
energetic charge of everything and refusing to take a penny for his
services. After a number of years the old judge to whom he always
repaired with these matters of probate, knowing his generosity in this
respect, also refused to accept any fee. When he saw him coming he would
exclaim:

"Well, Elihu, what is it this time? Another widow or orphan that we've
got to look after?"

After Elihu had explained what it was, he would add:

"Well, Elihu, I do hope that some day some rich man will call you to
straighten out his affairs. I'd like to see _you_ get a little
something, so that _I_ might get a little something. Eh, Elihu?" Then he
would jocularly poke his companion in charity in the ribs.

These general benefactions were continuous and coeval with his local
prosperity and dominance, and their modification as well as the man's
general decline the result of the rise of this other individual--Robert
Palmer,--"operating" to take the color of power and preeminence from
him.

Palmer was the owner of a small shipyard here at the time, a thing which
was not much at first but which grew swiftly. He was born in Noank
also, a few years before Burridge, and as a builder of vessels had been
slowly forging his way to a moderate competence when Elihu was already
successful. He was a keen, fine-featured, energetic individual, with
excellent commercial and strong religious instincts, and by dint of hard
labor and a saving dispo