establishment, with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the mind to repose and speculation.
I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much when you come to look upon many phases of it.
“Did any of you ever know a contented man?” I inquired idly, merely for the sake of something to say.
There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye.
Old Mr. Main was the first to answer.
“Yes, I did. One.”
“So did I,” put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to think about it.
“Yes, and I did,” said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door.
“Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob,” said old Mr. Main, looking inquisitively at the boat- builder.
“I think we’ve all got the same man in mind, likely,” returned the builder.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Charlie Potter,” said the builder.
“That’s the man!” exclaimed Mr. Main.
“Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be,” said an old fisherman who had hitherto been silent.
Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter—what a humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all the more interesting.
“So you really think he is contented, do you?” I asked.
“Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man,” replied Mr. Main, with convincing emphasis.
“Well,” I returned, “that’s rather interesting. What sort of a man is he?”
“Oh, he’s just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds boats occasionally,” put in the boat- builder.
“Is that all? Nothing else?”
“He preaches now and then—not regularly,” said Mr. Main.
A-ha! I thought. A religionist!
“A preacher is expected to set a good example,” I said.
“He ain’t a regular preacher,” said Mr. Main, rather quickly. “He’s just kind of around in religious work.”
“What do you mean?” I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of this “around.”
“Well,” answered the boat builder, “he don’t take any money for what he does. He ain’t got anything.”
“What does he live on then?” I persisted, still wondering at the significance of “around in religious work.”
“I don’t know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, I believe.”
“He makes models of yachts,” put in one of the bystanders. “He sold the New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago.”
A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A visionary—a theorist.
“What else?” I asked, hoping to draw them out. “What makes you all think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?”
“Well,” said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of sympathetic emphasis in his voice, “Charlie Potter is just a good man, that’s all. That’s why he’s contented. He does as near as he can what he thinks he ought to by other people—poor people.”
“You won’t find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter,” put in the boat-builder. “That’s the trouble with him, really. He’s too good. He don’t look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for himself some in this world. If he don’t, no one else will.”
“Right you are, Henry,” echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere.
I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so.
“If he wasn’t that way, he’d be a darned sight better off than he is,” said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room.
“What makes you say that?” I queried. “Isn’t it better to be kind-hearted and generous than not?”
“It’s all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain’t sayin’ that you’ve got to give your last cent away and let your family go hungry.”
