which he had been pronounced by the knowing ones to be a capable workman, "if only he would stick to it." He had a blacksmith's shop, where, when the fit was on him, he would shoe a horse better than any man in the country. No one could supply a missing screw, or apply a timely brace, with more adroitness. He could mend cracked china so as to be almost as good as new; he could use carpenter's tools as well as a born carpenter, and would doctor a rheumatic door or a shaky window better than half the professional artisans in wood. No man could put a refractory clock to rights with more ingenuity than Sam,-that is, if you would give him his time to be about it. I shall never forget the wrath and dismay which he roused in my Aunt Lois's mind by the leisurely way in which, after having taken our own venerable kitchen clock to pieces, and strewn the fragments all over the kitchen, he would roost over it in endless incubation, telling stories, entering into long-winded theological discussions, smoking pipes, and giving his tories of all the other clocks in Oldtown, with occasional memoirs of those in Needmore, the North Parish, and Podunk, as placidly indifferent to all her volleys of sarcasm and contempt, her stinging expostulations and philippics, as the sailing old moon is to the frisky, animated barking of some puppy dog of earth. "Why, ye see, Miss Lois," he would say, "clocks can't be druv; that 's jest what they can't. Some things can be druv, and then agin some things can't, and clocks is that kind. They 's jest got to be humored. Now this 'ere's a 'mazin' good clock, give me my time on it, and I'll have it so 't will keep straight on to the Millennium." "Millennium!" says Aunt Lois, with a snort of infinite contempt. "Yes, the Millennium," says Sam, letting fall his work in a contemplative manner. "That 'ere's an interestin' topic now. Parson Lothrop, he don't think the Millennium will last a thousand years. What 's your 'pinion on that pint, Miss Lois?" "My opinion is," said Aunt Lois, in her most nipping tones, "that if folks don't mind their own business, and do with their might what their hands find to do, the Millennium won't come at all." 66 “Wal, you see, Miss Lois, it's just here,— one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." "I should think you thought a day was a thousand years, the way you work," said Aunt Lois. "Wal," says Sam, sitting down with his back to his desperate litter of wheels, weights, and pendulums, and meditatively caressing his knee as he watched the sailing clouds in abstract meditation, "ye see, ef a thing's ordained, why it 's got to be, ef you don't lift a finger. That 'ere 's so now, ain't it?" "Sam Lawson, you are about the most aggravating creature I ever had to do with. Here you 've got our clock all to pieces, and have been keeping up a perfect hurrah's nest in our kitchen for three days, and there you sit maundering and talking with your back to your work, fussin' about the Millennium, which is none of your business, or mine, as I know of! Do either put that clock together or let it alone!" "Don't you be a grain uneasy, Miss Lois. Why, I'll have your clock all right in the end, but I can't be druv. Wall, I guess I'll take another spell on 't to-morrow or Friday." Poor Aunt Lois, horror-stricken, but seeing herself actually in the hands of the imperturba ble enemy, now essayed the tack of conciliation. "Now do, Lawson, just finish up this job, and I 'll pay you down, right on the spot; and you need the money." "I'd like to 'blige ye, Miss Lois; but ye see money ain't every thing in this world. Ef I work tew long on one thing, my mind kind o' gives out, ye see; and besides, I 've got some 'sponsibilities to 'tend to. There 's Mrs. Captain Brown, she made me promise to come today and look at the nose o' that 'ere silver teapot o' hern; it 's kind o' sprung a leak. And then I'greed to split a little oven-wood for the Widdah Pedee, that lives up on the Shelburn road. Must visit the widdahs in their affliction, Scriptur' says. And then there's Hepsy she's allers castin' it up at me that I don't do nothing for her and the chil'en; but then, lordy massy, Hepsy hain't no sort o' patience. Why jest this mornin' I was a tellin' her to count up her marcies, and I 'clare for 't if I did n't think she 'd a throwed the tongs at That 'ere woman's temper railly makes me consarned. Wal, good-day, Miss Lois. I'll be along again to-morrow or Friday or the first o' next week." And away he went with long, loose strides down the village street, while the me. leisurely wail of an old fuguing tune floated back after him, 46 Thy years are an Eternal day, Thy years are an "An eternal torment," said Aunt Lois, with a snap. "I'm sure, if there's a mortal creature on this earth that I pity, it 's Hepsy Lawson. Folks talk about her scolding,-that Sam Lawson is enough to make the saints in Heaven fall from grace. And you can't do any thing with him it's like charging bayonet into a woolsack." : One Saturday afternoon, Tina and I drove over to Needmore with a view to having one more gossip with Sam Lawson. Hepsy, it appears, had departed this life, and Sam had gone over to live with a son of his in Needmore. We found him roosting placidly in the porch on the sunny side of the house. "Why, lordy massy, bless your soul an' body, ef that ain't Horace Holyoke!" he said, when he recognized who I was. "An' this 'ere 's your wife, is it? Wal, wal, how this 'ere world does turn round! Wal, now, who would ha' |