almost well-contented. For the men were not of rash enterprise, hot

labor, or fervid ambition; and although they counted things by money,

they did not count one another so. They never encouraged a friend to

work so hard as to grow too wealthy, and if he did so, they expected him

to grow more generous than he liked to be. And as soon as he failed upon

that point, instead of adoring, they growled at him, because every one

of them might have had as full a worsted stocking if his mind had been

small enough to forget the difference betwixt the land and sea, the tide

of labor and the time of leisure.

To these local and tribal distinctions they added the lofty expansion of

sons of the sea. The habit of rising on the surge and falling into the

trough behind it enables a biped, as soon as he lands, to take things

that are flat with indifference. His head and legs have got into a state

of firm confidence in one another, and all these declare--with the rest

of the body performing as chorus gratis--that now they are come to a

smaller affair, upon which they intend to enjoy themselves. So that,

while strenuous and quick of movement--whenever they could not help

it--and sometimes even brisk of mind (if anybody strove to cheat them),

these men generally made no griefs beyond what they were born to.

Zebedee Tugwell was now their chief, and well deserved to be so. Every

community of common-sense demands to have somebody over it, and nobody

could have felt ashamed to be under Captain Tugwell. He had built with

his own hands, and bought--for no man's work is his own until he has

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