“Now I am going to ask you a question,” said the old man, “and I don’t know as you can tell me; but you are a learned man, and I never had any learning, only what I got by natur.”—­It was in vain that we reminded him that he could quote Josephus to our confusion.—­“I’ve thought, if I ever met a learned man, I should like to ask him this question.  Can you tell me how Axy is spelt, and what it means? Axy,” says he; “there’s a girl over here is named Axy.  Now what is it?  What does it mean?  Is it Scriptur?  I’ve read my Bible twenty-five years over and over, and I never came across it.”

“Did you read it twenty-five years for this object?” I asked.

“Well, how is it spelt?  Wife, how is it spelt?”

She said,—­“It is in the Bible; I’ve seen it.”

“Well, how do you spell it?”

“I don’t know.  A c h, ach, s e h, seh,—­Achseh.”

“Does that spell Axy?  Well, do you know what it means?” asked he, turning to me.

“No,” I replied,—­“I never heard the sound before.”

“There was a schoolmaster down here once, and they asked him what it meant, and he said it had no more meaning than a bean-pole.”

I told him that I held the same opinion with the schoolmaster.  I had been a schoolmaster myself, and had had strange names to deal with.  I also heard of such names as Zoheth, Beriah, Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, hereabouts.

At length the little boy, who had a seat quite in the chimney-corner, took off his stockings and shoes, warmed his feet, and went off to bed; then the fool followed him; and finally the old man.  He proceeded to make preparations for retiring, discoursing meanwhile with Panurgic plainness of speech on the ills to which old humanity is subject.  We were a rare haul for him.  He could commonly get none but ministers to talk to, though sometimes ten of them at once, and he was glad to meet some of the laity at leisure.  The evening was not long enough for him.  As I had been sick, the old lady asked if I would not go to bed,—­it was getting late for old people; but the old man, who had not yet done his stories, said,—­

“You a’n’t particular, are you?”

“Oh, no,” said I,—­“I am in no hurry.  I believe I have weathered the Clam cape.”

“They are good,” said he; “I wish I had some of them now.”

“They never hurt me,” said the old lady.

“But then you took out the part that killed a cat,” said I.

At last we cut him short in the midst of his stories, which he promised to resume in the morning.  Yet, after all, one of the old ladies who came into our room in the night to fasten the fire-board, which rattled, as she went out took the precaution to fasten us in.  Old women are by nature more suspicious than old men.  However, the winds howled around the house, and made the fire-boards as well as the casements rattle well that night.  It was probably a windy night for any locality, but we could not distinguish the roar which was proper to the ocean from that which was due to the wind alone.