When we awoke the following morning Mr. Bourne was awaiting our coming with some eagerness. The dwarf was absent, and the old man apologized for one or two of Peter's remarks the night before which had seemed to him uncivil. These were, however, only some of Peter's mild bitternesses about division of property, the injustice of modern laws, the inequalities of taxation, etc., which had seemed harmless enough in the mouth of a pauper.
While waiting the leisurely repairs of our vehicle at the hands of the captured blacksmith, I yielded to Mr. Bourne's eager invitation to come with him to see a piece of land he owned. "It's been in the family near two hundred years," he said proudly. "Peter says I ought to be ashamed to tell of my folks' grasping all them years God's gift of the soil that ought to be just as free as the ocean and the sky; but I'm glad I've got it. Peter's folks came from Middleboro way, and never did own no land nor nothin', and I've noticed it's them sort that's always maddest at folks as does have family things." After a few minutes of silence he added: "Peter can't help it. It's born in him to feel that way, just as it's born into me to feel proud of my property." We walked along the sandy road under the beautiful autumnal sky. A dense group of stunted cedars and one towering fir tree rose sombrely in a little enclosed corner below the church. "This is my property," said the old man, cheerfully, "and they're all Bournes and Swifts in it. There lies my great-grandfather, the old parson, under that flat stone come from England. Here is my mother. That slate headstone over there is for my brother lost at sea on one of his voyages. I am going to be put exactly here. Them four stones I put to mark it. And Peter hasn't any graveyard--don't even know where his father is buried--so he's going to lie over here in this corner. He's the only one as ain't a Swift or a Bourne, and it's a great honor to him. He's had to pay me for it, though; he's written me an epitaph, and it's a good one; it'll be the best one in the whole graveyard."
"Accommodation," service in travel, 273, 298.
Adams, John, quoted, on landlord, 69; on drinking habits, 103, 112; on Revolutionary sentiments, 170-173, 175; on Revolutionary song, 173.
