Litchfield enquirer., 1873-04-03
From Scribner's Monthly.l NOT A PLEASANT STORY: BEING PASSAGES FROM THE PRIVATE HIsTo RY OF PUBLIC NUISANCE.

1 NOT A PLEASANT STORY: BEING PASSAGES FROM THE PRIVATE HIsTo- l RY OF PUBLIC NUISANCE.
 Since you've been so good, sir, thank | you. It's not over-often I get the chance. l I like the Common too. It isn't so much the gravel, nor the water-spirits. It's the 1 elbow-room. Why, when you come to see the world, as did down to Virginny, then plump down in this town, leastways my parts of it, for lifetime, sir, if there's any one thing more than any other thing a mans conscious of, it's elbows. Though maybe might be taken bit sensitive on that point, natural It's the singular number that's the rough of life, to my thinking
 l How did lose the arm? One question 1 at once, J you please, sir. I'm an aging man, and easy put awry in conversation. You'll remember that you settled for mornings job-very generous, sir,-and brought me here in the character of Public Nuisance. Begging your pardon, maybe you didn't use them language exact ''How now?" says you; ''shut up that instrument and come to the Common with me, and tell me, in Heavens name, what you grind it for" That's all you says; but see it in your eyes you'd take no grudge to see me shut up in it, and ground ont of the way myself. No of fense, sir. I'm used tot. Hear it of and on every day Public nuisance P some times quite loud and meant for me to hear, and again soft-ike and dainty, from gals in white fur wraps, and leaving little puffs of sweet smells along behind 'em. Sometimes from folks that pay me someat 1 too, dropping in occasional a piece of currency, which isn't frequent, with their eyes looking straight ahead ,as if they didn't mean to see themselves caught in the act. with twitches about the mouth. Soldiers friends, take it. There's generally An dersonville or someat like that's to pay, there. Then there's 'tother kind that stops and says, "What's your tax-report p says they, meaning, make 1t, to mock me for rich beggar, which Heaven knows isn't so agree ble for an okkypation as to make it likely. I won't say but or gan- grinders and easy cash Golks has said, wicked cash) have seen each others faces, since that's the talk, and I'm not over-much acquainted in the trade my self personal. All is, fur's my experience goes, it's grinding slow trade. Blithe thinks so too. Blithe is smart to see pints of thing. She'll talk betimes of setting me up in the candy line, but molasses is proper dear, and there is the sinking of the instrument, which we've 1 got mortgage on the cook-stove for, in which case, you see, you'd be under some difficulties in respect to boiling down of your stock in trade.
 Blithe is my little gal.
 Did you ever go out oyster dredgin', !, | N0 Wall would oy1~h& %0 Nho4' e line of business very we'll to take in a fancy way, say for an afternoon. I can't say as I'd recommend 1t from perpetooal point of view. I owned an oyster-boat once.
 That was nine-ten-that was eleven years ago. Now it seems to me every day l of twenty-five. l wasn't a young man when I married and if was put tot to choose, sir, for aging, between merridge and rheumatiz, I'd take my chance on rheumatiz any day. There's that pecoo- larity about merridge to my mind.
 Yes. sir. it was just eleven years ago this year left the oyster-boat. This was the way of it.
 There's times I think I'd like to go 1 back. I declare I do. There's advanta- ges about an oyster-boat, more especially when you come to live in it, as I did. I lived in my boat three years. She was nothing for craft, you know, . low-necked, l clumsy creeter, with her cabin so small you had to go out to turn round in it ]; and habit of taking fire in her middle whenever I broiled sarsingers. She did week boarded till the week cleared her. But I never laid it up agin her very much, l for she was watef-tight, warm-ribbed, sensible kind of hulk, who understood her business, and held her anchor ill q 1 high tide anywheres down the flats you'd 8 mind to try her.
 A lonesome way of life? Maybe. On the whole don't know but it was. Seems so now. Seemed so then. But bless you there's been times, looking back ont, when it was a Paradise to think on. l Sir, there was never Paradise without it's swoird O flames turning which way and what. If so be that the lay of it runs in a dredging-boat, turn your back on Para disc, and you've seen the last ont. You can't crawl in, nor you can't creep under, l nor you can't hist over, nor you can't peek round. You've seen the end ont. Make your blunder and stick tot. Go your ways and bide by 'em: Hold your tongue, and heft up your heart, and work in the sweat of your brow, and keep your mind to youself, sir, but never go sneaking back to beg into a garding as you've trod the flowers on. and shut the gate on, and shook the dust from your feet upon, of your own free will and pleasure.
 Not to say that q dredging-boat is so much like garding as may be, but cosy place, more especial. in a story, oyster boat is. What with pipe, and the fieck of fire in the cook-stove, and your dread nought hanging on the wall, and the cat I kept cat. Her name was Venus die Medicine encommon name for cat, l thought I got her from house-and- sign painter who drowned himself, with a wife and nine small children. owing, they thought, to sunstroke of July day. So what with the cat cleaning of the spider for you with her clean pink tongue q washed it afterwards when wasn't too busy), and the shade and warmness along in the corners of the cabin, and the stoo- pid, sleepy swashin of the boat. Consid- erin, too, that you hadn't hasped the cabin door, and that the tide splashed in, drop ping down, and that the cat would leave the sarsinger dish to run and lick the drops up. Considerin lurch to the old hulk now and then, heels over head like a tipsy log, and viewip the wind from q cheerful point.
 1 I think, sir, must be of curious turn of mind. It used to trouble me now a great deal, in that boat, about the oysters. Not the dredging, by no means, for what would be the sense in being oyster, if you aUasnt dredged? It must be great satisfaction, it seems to me, being oys- ter, to live under dredgingg-boat. But what, now, is the sense of being oyster If the Almighty made one set of living creeturs for no purpose nor no reason un-
 der the canopy of Heaven but to slip easy down another set of living creetur's
 throats-but there, I've lost it; I had it
 once as slick as whistle. I most forget
 the way it went. But it was a curious
 turn of mind, and made either me or the Almighty sight of trouble; I don't
 clearly remember which.
 Well, it come one night of December. l If was an uolv ni0hk tOO voj1 don offer