a week he had not driven a nail. "Godfrey's mighty!" he is reported to
have exclaimed. "I don't know whether to build the average cupola and
trust to a hen's fittin' it, or take an average hen and build a cupola
round her. Maybe I'll be all right after I get started, but it's where
to start that beats me."

Where to start beat me, also, and it might be beating me yet, if I
hadn't dropped in at the post-office and heard Asaph Tidditt telling
a story to the group around the stove. After he had finished, and,
the mail being sorted, we were walking homeward together, I asked a
question.

"Asaph," said I, "when you start to spin a yarn how do you begin?"

"Hey?" he exclaimed. "How do I begin? Why, I just heave to and go to
work and begin, that's all."

"Yes, I know, but where do you begin?"

"At the beginnin', naturally. If you was cal'latin' to sail a boat race
you wouldn't commence at t'other end of the course, would you?"

"_I_ might; practical people wouldn't, I suppose. But--what IS the
beginning? Suppose there were a lot of beginnings and you didn't know
which to choose."

"Oh, we-ll, in that case I'd just sort of--of edge around till I found
one that--that was a beginnin' of SOMETHIN' and I'd start there. You
understand, don't you? Take that yarn I was spinnin' just now--that one
about Josiah Dimick's great uncle's pig on his mother's side. I mean