An amused and exhausted committee had at last given him his desire.

The simplicity and utter happiness of the old man, as he stood up in his very best Sunday clothes, won the audience ere he opened his mouth.

They sat unmurmuring through seven-and-thirty hatchet-made verses describing at fullest length the loss of the schooner _Joan Hasken_ off the Georges in the gale of 1867, and when he came to an end they shouted with one kindly throat.
A far-sighted Boston reporter slid away for a full copy of the epic and an interview with the author; so that earth had nothing more to offer Captain Bart Edwardes, ex-whaler, shipwright, master-fisherman, and poet, in the seventy-third year of his age.
"Naow, I call that sensible," said the Eastport man.

"I've bin over that graound with his writin', jest as he read it, in my two hands, and I can testify that he's got it all in." "If Dan here couldn't do better'n that with one hand before breakfast, he ought to be switched," said Salters, upholding the honor of Massachusetts on general principles.

"Not but what I'm free to own he's considerable litt'ery--fer Maine.