“One thing he was most set about. That was usin’ trains or enythin’ else besides the two legs that God gave him. He uster make regular trips up Boston and back, carryin’ packages and letters for folks. ’Twasn’t long before we wuz callin’ him ‘Barney Gould’s Express!’ And I swan efen one day, when Ben Howes wanted a dozen wood-end tooth rakes, he gave Barney a quarter and the durn fool walked all the way to Boston, got the rakes, and hiked all the way back with the rakes over his shoulder.
“Nuther funny thing ’bout Barney. He’d got the idee somewheres that he owned the roads. He’d stop everybody he met and ask ’em for two cents for his ‘road tax.’ I ’member one day he came up to me for the tax. All’s I had was a dime. He said that would pay my road tax for five years. If he’d lived fer that five years, he would’ve waited ’til then to ask me again; he never forgot who had paid and who hadn’t, and never hit up the same feller twice in the same year.
“Yu’ve heard tell about them long-distance walkers, I calculate. Wal, Barney was one of ’em. Least aways that’s how the stories go. They tell one story ’bout that’s kinda hard t’ believe. Seems that Cap’n Joel Nickerson was startin’ off in his schooner for New Orleans. Barney was foolin’ ’round down the dock, helpin’ the crew cast off. Cap’n Nickerson hollered over to him—‘Say, Barney—meet us down New Orleans to help us tie up, will ye?’ You won’t believe me, but sure enough, when the old schooner hove ’long side at the New Orleans dock, there was Barney, waitin’ to help tie up. He’d walked all the way from P’town to New Orleans.
“An’ one time—bet you won’t believe this either—he thought he’d like t’ see the Wild West. Yep—walked all the way to ’Frisco and back. Took him near two years, but he said it was wuth it. ’Course, that was when he was young and strong. Yep—he sure had a pair of legs, did Barney Gould.”
... It Pays to Keep
the Sabbath
Joe Crocker, down Wellfleet way, learned through bitter experience that it pays to keep the Sabbath.
Joe was always one to find a dollar, and when he did, he made the most of it. But he didn’t hanker after what most folks call real work. His financial status depended mostly on old Lady Luck. And she chose one Sunday to shine down on him.
Joe was strolling down the beach one Sunday morning when God-fearing folks were in church, and he came across a school of blackfish flung up on the beach. Now a man who finds such a school of beached blackfish is a fortunate one indeed, for he is well paid for the “melons” that are found in the skulls of the fish.
Old Joe promptly set to work cutting his initials in the blackfish skulls as a claim to his ownership. He was busily engaged in this task when the Methodist minister came by and caught him in the act, so to speak. He reprimanded him severely, and Joe just laughed. The minister said he could laugh then, but that he would get the devil’s own pay tomorrow, and strode on. I guess he knew it was useless to try and convert a melon-cutting heathen on the Sabbath.