There was another uncle, Uncle Lem, sailmaker by trade, whose soul was as white as the canvas on which he worked. He was the son of Lemuel and Abigail (Pierce) Simmons, and was born in 1790. He married in 1818 Priscilla, daughter of Thomas Sherman, and died December 6, 1863. No truer inscription was ever cut on a gravestone than that which says in simple, unaffected words that, “he was universally beloved and respected; honest and upright, with a cheerful, pleasant manner, and a kind, benevolent heart. To know him was to love him.”
There was still another uncle of whom I am glad of an opportunity to say a word as the tribute of a friend to his memory. Uncle Ed. Watson, the Lord of the Isle, was in many respects a remarkable man. Born and bred on Clark’s Island at the entrance of Plymouth harbor about four miles from town, and eighty acres in extent, he there spent his life a sailor and fisherman when occasion demanded, always a farmer familiar with the secrets which nature is ready to disclose to her lovers, a poet of no mean acquirements, and above all a student of the events of the world, a philosopher who acted his philosophy without preaching it, and who as much deserves the title of sage as some who in a broader field won a more notorious name. He did not talk philosophy as Hawthorne described Emerson and Thoreau talking it, leaning on their hoes in the garden with Alcott sitting on the fence discoursing on the “Why and the Wherefore,” but as he laboriously tilled the soil he recognized in every stone and worm and blade of grass the prodigality of nature, and in every annual bloom of the buttercup and rose a lesson of obedience to the laws of God. He said to me once, “Oh, Mr. Davis, if all were as obedient to the divine will as the blossoms on yonder apple tree, by Geo. Germain, what a world this would be.” In his island home he was hospitable to the last degree. Visitors came to his grounds as if they were public, and if friends were among them he dropped his hoe or spade or scythe to entertain them when his labor in the field could ill be spared, and perhaps invited them to partake of his noonday meal, but like Sir Roderick:
“Yet not in action, word or eye,
Failed aught in hospitality.”
I was one day at Plymouth Rock with Wm. E. Forster, who had recently distinguished himself by his efforts in parliament in favor of the educational bill, when Mr. Watson came up the wharf with a kinnerkin in one hand, and a pair of chickens in the other. I introduced him to Mr. Foster as a member of the English parliament, and he asked if the gentleman was Wm. E. Forster—Forster, with an “r,” and when assured that he was, he said, “I am glad to see you. I know all about you, that last education speech you made hit the nail on the head.” The two then engaged in conversation on English affairs, and after they separated I pointed out to Mr. Forster the island on which Mr. Watson was born, and had always lived, having had only a schooling of three months in all his life. “You astonish me,” he replied, adding, “why that man knows more about English politics than three-fourths of the members of parliament.”
To give him his full name, Edward Winslow Watson, son of John and Lucia Marston Watson, was born December 17, 1797, and died where he was born, August 8, 1876. His funeral was unique and impressive. The green bottom lap streak boat in which many hundreds of times he had stemmed the winds and tide was the catafalque which bore him to town, while the boats of his island and Saquish and Gurnet friends, like white-winged angels, attended him to his rest. In closing this notice of my friend I will quote from his little book of poems lines illustrating the serious thought which his mind evolved from the most trifling incidents of life:
“Dear Jennie, that nice cranberry tart,
You gave to me bedecked with paste,
Lies like a bleeding, broken heart,
Whose inner life has run to waste.