an' yer trade'll keep you. A rollin' stun gathers no moss. Dry bread tu
home's better 'n roast meat an' gravy abroad."

"All feet don't tread in one shoe, Uncle Shub," said young Brewster,
capping the old fellow's proverbs with another. "Don't see why I
shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an'
if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer
all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when
other folks ken live in big houses an' ride in 'kerriges, an' all
that."

"A'n't yer got bread enough to eat, an' a place to sleep? an' what
more's any on 'em got? You stay here; make yer money on the old Cape,
where yer father an' grand'ther made it afore you. Use yer means, an'
God 'll give the blessin'. Yer can't honestly git rich anywheres all tu
once. Good an' quickly don't often meet. One nail drives out another.
Slow an' easy goes fur in a day. Honor an' ease a'n't often bedfellows.
Don't yer be a goose, I tell ye. What's to become of Hepsy Ann?"

Having delivered himself of which last and hardest shot, Uncle Shubael
shouldered his cod-craft, and, without awaiting an answer, tugged
across the sand-beach for home.

Elkanah Brewster was a Cape-Cod boy, with a pedigree, if he had ever
thought of it, as long as any on the Cape,--and they are the longest in
the land. His forefathers had caught fish to the remotest generation
known. The Cape boys take to the water like young ducks; and are born
with a hook and line in their fists, so to speak, as the Newfoundland
codfish and Bay Chaleur mackerel know, to their cost. "Down on old
Chatham" there is little question of a boy's calling, if he only comes