"Gentlemen," he says, "we have here the usual application from Asaph
Blueworthy for aid from the town. I don't know's there's much use for
me to read it--it's tolerable familiar. 'Suffering from lumbago and
rheumatiz'--um, yes. 'Out of work'--um, just so. 'Respectfully begs that
the board will'--etcetery and so forth. Well, gentlemen, what's your
pleasure?"

Darius Gott, he speaks first, and dry and drawling as ever. "Out of
work, hey?" says Darius. "Mr. Chairman, I should like to ask if anybody
here remembers the time when Ase was IN work?"

Nobody did, and Cap'n Benijah Poundberry--he was chairman at that
time--he fetches the table a welt with his starboard fist and comes out
emphatic.

"Feller members," says he, "I don't know how the rest of you feel, but
it's my opinion that this board has done too much for that lazy loafer
already. Long's his sister, Thankful, lived, we couldn't say nothing, of
course. If she wanted to slave and work so's her brother could live
in idleness and sloth, why, that was her business. There ain't any law
against a body's making a fool of herself, more's the pity. But she's
been dead a year, and he's done nothing since but live on those that'll
trust him, and ask help from the town. He ain't sick--except sick of
work. Now, it's my idea that, long's he's bound to be a pauper, he
might's well be treated as a pauper. Let's send him to the poorhouse."

"But," says I, "he owns his place down there by the shore, don't he?"

All hands laughed--that is, all but Cap'n Benijah. "Own nothing," says
the cap'n. "The whole rat trap, from the keel to maintruck, ain't worth