“He’d done the same to me, if he’d had the chance, and wit enough.”
Joe Griffin in the Honey Pot. Page 139.
“It makes my heart ache, Joseph,” said Uncle Isaac, “to see a young man in your situation in such an unreconciled frame of mind; we never should do wrong to others because they have done, or would do, wrong to us. So far from manifesting any contrition, you justify yourself in your evil courses. Instead of resignation under trial, you appear to me to be ‘gritting your teeth,’ and thrashing about like unto a seal in a herring net.”
“Who was it,” asked John Strout, “when Mose Atherton was all dressed up, going to walk round the head of the bay, to see Sally Bannister, offered to show him a shorter cut over the marsh, and led him into a honey-pot, then went to John Godsoe’s, told them there was a man’s hat on Moll Graffam’s honey-pot, and he guessed somebody must be in trouble? When Godsoe’s people got there, the tide was flowing around him, and the water up to his chin.”
Joe made no reply to this.
“Don’t be sullen, Joe, for you must perceive we’re measuring you by your own bushel. I begin to fear it may become our duty to leave you here till you’re in a more submissive frame of mind.”
“O, Uncle Isaac, you won’t leave me in this mire, six miles from any human being, to perish?”
“Not to perish, young man, but to repent. Let me see: to-day’s Thursday; we can give you a little light food, and leave you over the Sabbath; it’s a good day, and should bring serious reflections. The water don’t come up here, except when it’s a storm. I don’t see any signs of a storm—do you, boys?”
The others didn’t see much signs of one; some thought that ’twas a little “smurry.”