"I have really private business at Swartzdorp. Word was brought to me three days ago that Tante Anna dutifully buried Matakit months ago. Vassell was the Kaffir’s life; I will be his resurrection. A great diamond of the first water is very salable, and the treasury of the republic is running low."
"But it may not be a diamond of the first water," said I.
"It must be," said the patriarch. "Anything less would be too shabby a mercy to Vassell."
About one-tenth of the people in Boston are British Canadians, mostly from the Maritime Provinces, an acquisitive prudent folk who see naught to be gained by correcting casual acquaintances who mistake them for down-east Yankees. Often, indeed, they are descendants of Hezekiahs and Priscillas who, having been Royalists during the War of Independence, found subsequent emigration to a British country incumbent on their Puritan consciences. These Americans, returned to the ancestral New England after four or five generations of absence, commonly find Boston ways surprisingly congenial, though they continue to cherish pride in British origin, and a decent warmth of regard for fellow natives of the Maritime Provinces. Hence a known Canadian is frequently addressed by an unsuspected one with, "I am from Canada, too." Having learned this from ten years’ experience, I was little surprised when old Adam Bemis, meeting me on the corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets, in May, 1915, stopped and stealthily whispered, "I am from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia."
"Really! I have always taken you for one of the prevalent minority, a man from the State of Maine."
"Most folks do. It doesn’t vex me any more. But I’ve wanted to tell you any time the last ten years."
"It’s not my way to hurry. You will understand that well when I explain. I’m needing friendly advice."
He had ever worn the air of preoccupation during our twelve years’ acquaintance, but that seemed proper to an inventor burdened with the task of devising and selecting novelties for the Annual Announcement by which Miss Minnely’s Prize Package Department furthers the popularity of her famous Family Blessing. The happy possessor of five new subscription certificates, on remitting them to Adam’s Department, receives by mail, prepaid, Number 1 Prize Package. Number 2 falls to the collector of ten such certificates; and so on, in gradations of Miss Minnely’s shrewd beneficence. The magnifico of one thousand certificates obtains choice between a gasoline auto-buggy and a New England farm. To be ever adding to or choosing from the world’s changing assortment of moral mechanical toys, celluloid table ornaments, reversible albums, watches warranted gold filled, books combining thrill with edification, and more or less similar "premiums" to no calculable end, might well account for Old Adam’s aspect, at once solemn and unsettled.