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."