The clammer

THE CLAMMER
BY WILLIAM JOHN HOPKINS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1906
COPYRIGHT 1906 BY WILLIAM JOHN HOPKINS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published March, 1906
THE CLAMMER
MANY of my friends—and probably all my neighbors—think me erratic and peculiar, I do not doubt. My friends remonstrate with me mildly, and I usually listen and accept and make no reply. For how can they know? And, they being what they are, how can I help them to a knowledge of things which must be born in a man? My neighbors do not remonstrate, for my neighbors are not of necessity my friends, and I am queer enough not to care to cultivate a man’s acquaintance merely because he lives next me.
There is Goodwin the Rich, who has the palace on the hill, above my favorite clam beds. It is not likely that I shall ever know him, although his automobiles flash past my front gate, covering my hedge with dust, and enveloping my house in nauseous smells. I do not like automobiles. It is not to be imagined that Goodwin finds me peculiar, for he is probably unaware of my existence; but I have some humbler neighbors who stare at me and shake their heads. And I smile and pass on; for I know what I know, and it passeth their understanding. And all this shaking of heads, and all the protesting of my friends, is because I choose to go clamming.
Some of my friends may, at first, have had the idea that my interest in clams was biological; for I received some training in that branch of science, and even taught it—or was supposed to teach it, with other branches—in a school. But I look back upon that school with horror, as, no doubt, my victims regard me, in retrospect. And my neighbors may, very naturally, have assumed that my interest in clams was gastronomic, which is, indeed, nearer the truth. But the evidence on that point was inconclusive. They were not asked to my feasts of steamed clams, if I had any, and they came to look upon me as simply queer.