The old fisherman had retailed a great deal of the current gossip of the country to me during the day. Humor and pathos, happiness and misery, honesty and wickedness, and all the other elements that enter into the stories of human lives, found their places in the day’s recital. The old man has much benevolence in his heart. Most of his comments upon the frailties of his fellow-creatures were tolerant and charitable. They were usually tempered with sly quips, and a disposition to accord the benefit of doubt.
He frequently gives away fish, on his various trips, to people who cannot afford to buy them and to whom the food is most welcome, and extends credit to others who he knows can never pay. He does all kinds of little errands that his routes make possible, and altogether he is a simple, good-natured soul.
Like everybody else, he is an infinitesimal item in the scheme of creation, but there are many other items that are much more objectionable than Catfish John. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but it is often associated with cussedness, so we can safely leave the matter of John’s redemption to other agencies than soap.
Sipes once wisely remarked that “it’s no use tryin’ to tell ev’rybody wot to do all the time, an’ I’ve quit. If ev’ry feller’d mind ’is own business instid o’ butt’n in an’ tryin’ to boss ev’rybody else, there’d be a lot less fussin’ goin’ on. The only way to git John clean ’ud be to burn ’im, an’ they’s a lot o’ clean-lookin’ people that’ll come to that long ’fore he does. He’s a nice ol’ feller.”
“Doc Looney”
CHAPTER VIII
DOC LOONEY
ANOTHER nondescript, whom I occasionally met prowling around among the hills and along the beach, was known as “Doc Looney.” Catfish John said he was a “yarb man,” and that he had been to see him sometimes when he “felt bad.”
Doc seemed to have no fixed abode, and seemed disinclined to talk about one. He had rather a moth-eaten appearance, and wore an old pair of smoke-colored spectacles. He spent a great deal of time around the edges of the little marshes, back of the hills, looking for some particular “potential plant,” which he was never able to find.