had lived for the last few years somewhere near the Killick Cranberry Meadows,
they were called--and completely described in the calling--the Crambry
fool-family. A talented and much traveled gentleman who once stayed over night
at the Edgewood tavern, proclaimed it his opinion that Boomsher had been
gradually corrupted from Beaumarchais. When he wrote the word on his visiting
card and showed it to Mr. Wiley, Old Kennebec had replied, that in the
judgment of a man who had lived in large places and seen a turrible lot o'
life, such a name could never have been given either to a Christian or a
heathen family, that the way in which the letters was thrown together into it,
and the way in which they was sounded when read out loud, was entirely ag'in
reason. It was true, he said, that Beaumarchais, bein' such a fool-name, might
'a' be'n invented a-purpose for a fool-family, but he would n't hold even with
callin' 'em Boomsher; Crambry was well enough for 'em an' a sight easier to
speak.

Stephen knew a good deal about the Crambrys, for he passed their so-called
habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was only a month before that
he had found them all sitting outside their broken-down fence, surrounded by
decrepit chairs, sofas, tables, bedsteads, bits of carpet, and stoves.

"What's the matter?" he called out from his wagon.

"There ain't nothin' the matter," said Alcestis Crambry. "Father's (lead, an'
we're dividin' up the furnerchure."

Alcestis was the pride of the Crambrys, and the list of his attainments used
often to be on his proud father's lips. It was he who was the largest, "for
his size," in the family; he who could tell his brothers Paul and Arcadus "by
their looks"; he who knew a sour apple from a sweet one the minute he bit it;
he who, at the early age of ten, was bright enough to point to the cupboard