Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1871-03-04

spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story
has resolved itself into proverb, and il
the original of the popular saying thro'-
out New England Of "the Devil and Tom
Walker"
YARNINe- Parson Beecher enjoys story
telling as well as the next man, and the follow
ing will be read by the lover of free and highly
seasoned narrative with zest. 1t rivals some
of the best of our old friend Col. Anderson's
There She Blows"
Down on the Nantucket Island all the
male inhabitants are seafarng men.
They are whalers, absent for years at
home only for weeks. But during these
brief intervals from toll, these hardy sons
of the salt sea tell over the dangers they
have passed the hair-breath escapes,
when whales proved unruly or the wind
blew great guns The boys Of the island
listen with rapt attention and open ears
to these yarns, and inwardly resolve
that they will go on whaling voyage
when they get to he men. The whole
island is oily and nautical. Over all the
female inhabitants there hangs cloud
OF anxiety. Many fond, fearful wife,
lies awake aud trembling all night, as
she hears the wild wind sweeping down
upon the island, as if to carry it from its
moorings, and then off upon the water
lashing the waves to fury. She thinks
of the loved one far, far away, perhaps
wrecked, or his white bones bleaching
upon some desert coast The duties of
the clergyman of the island are largely
those OF visitation, to give personal con
solatien to the pentunian widows.
1t was sunny afternoon on Nan
tucket, when Rev. Mr.. Cheerful called
upon Mrs. Bobstay, whose husband, an
old whaler, had just sailed for the "spermy
city" of the broad Pacific sea. Mrs.
Bobstay was low down in her mind, and
required cheering word from the good
man. On the contrary, her son, eight
years old, Jack Bobstay, by name, was
iull of nerve and hope. The old man
had filled his sons mind with sea yarns
sufficiently thrilling for dime novel, and
whales, of reefng ice plated sails off the
ever-boisterous Cape Horn, of taking in
trying out etc, all of which he had
heard his father talk and swear about.
Mary an eighty barrel whale had J ack
captured while sleeping snugly in his
little bed, which his father had triced up
hammock fashion.
The scene was quiet one the DOM
inie was earnest in his low words of COM
fort the mother, her heart upon the
outspread ocean which she could see
streaking away southwark, to where the
ship Oiltub disappeared against the low
listn OFT fn alxy Dfitll lxr
Jack, on little STOOL sat drinking in
the warm sunshine, which streamed glo-
riously in through the open door. The
good man had his heart in the work he
calmed the fears of the sorrowng wife,
told her of the help and comfort she
had in her boy Jack, who would soon be
a man, and was about to place sooth-
ing climax upon his words of consola-
ton, by an appeal to the throne of grace,
when a denounaeat of the most startling
character burst upon the prevailing
serenity like fatal bolt from smiling
sky.
In listening, the mother had dropped
her knitting-a stocking just begun-the
ball Of yarn lay in her lap unheeded. All
unnoticed, Jack pulled out several faith
oms, and coiled it with sailor-like preci
sion upon the floor. That done, new
thought struck him. A large carving
fork lay upon the table. Jack secured
it. He ran the prongs through the newly
begun stocking. Then, just as Rev. Mr..
Cheerful was about to knee, Jack poised
bis ingeniously constructed impromptu
harpoon. Placing the left foot forwar d
as he had heard his father having done,
he drove the harpoon with all his force
at the unconscious cat sleeping in the
sun. His aim was true he struck the
feline, as his father would have termed
it, "abaft the star,board for'ard tiuke."
Persons sleeping in rooms with sheds
adjacent, which are nightly trequented
by cats, can possibly imagine the yell
that rose from that half-impaled Tabby.
She sprang to her feet, darted out the
door, her speed running out the colled
yarn rapidly, while above her screams,
rose the voice OF the delighted boy
whaler pay out mother, thunder and
lightning, pay out there she blows"
The attitude, the flashing eye, the startled
dominic, the crushed look of the troubled
mother, all presented picture the effect
of which stihed the intended prayer.
The minister ran of, and Jack ''coiled
in" while the mother mourned over the
emphatic demonstration of the bias OF
the boys mind. This was years ago,
and Jack is now "paying out" in the
| chill north Pacific waters.