Many farmers nowadays succeed in putting into barns at night the grass which they cut in the morning. Generally, however, these various processes of cutting, tedding, raking and storing the hay, if the weather is fair, 5 will take three or four days.

MODELS OF BIOGRAPHY

JOHN GILLEY 1

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

John Gilley's first venture was the purchase of a part of a small coasting schooner called the Preference, which could carry about one hundred tons, and cost between eight and nine hundred dollars. He became responsible for onethird of her value, paying down one or two hundred dollars, 5 which his father probably lent him. For the rest of the third he obtained credit for a short time from the seller of the vessel. The other two owners were men who belonged on Great Cranberry Island. The owners proceeded to use their purchase during all the mild weather — perhaps six 10 months of each year in carrying paving-stones to Boston. These stones, unlike the present rectangular granite blocks, were smooth cobblestones picked up on the outside beaches of the neighboring islands. They of course were not found on any inland or smooth-water beaches, but only where 15 heavy waves rolled the beach-stones up and down. The crew of the Preference must therefore anchor her off an exposed beach, and then, with a large dory, boat off to her the stones which they picked up by hand. This work was possible only during moderate weather. The stones 20

1 From John Gilley, Maine Farmer and Fisherman, pp. 31–35, 62–72. The American Unitarian Association, Boston, 1904. Copyright owned by The Century Company, New York.

must be of tolerably uniform size, neither too large nor too small; and each one had to be selected by the eye and picked up by the hand. When the dory was loaded, it had to be lifted off the beach by the men standing in the 5 water, and rowed out to the vessel; and there every single stone had to be picked up by hand and thrown on to the vessel. A hundred tons having been thus got aboard by sheer hard work of human muscle, the old craft, which was not too seaworthy, was sailed to Boston, to be dis10 charged at what was then called the "Stone Wharf" in Charlestown. There the crew threw the stones out of her hold on to the wharf by hand. They therefore lifted and threw these hundred tons of stone three times at least before they were deposited on the city's wharf. The cobble15 stones were the main freight of the vessel; but she also carried dried fish to Boston, and fetched back goods to the island stores of the vicinity. Some of the island people bought their flour, sugar, dry-goods, and other family stores in Boston through the captain of the schooner. John Gilley 20 soon began to go as captain, being sometimes accompanied by the other owners and sometimes by men on wages. was noted among his neighbors for the care and good judgment with which he executed their various commissions, and he knew himself to be trusted by them. This business 25 he followed for several years, paid off his debt to the seller of the schooner, and began to lay up money. It was an immense satisfaction to him to feel himself thus established in an honest business which he understood, and in which he was making his way. There are few solider satisfactions. 30 to be won in this world by anybody, in any condition of life. The scale of the business-large or small makes little difference in the measure of content.

He

In 1884 the extreme western point of Sutton's Island was sold to a "Westerner," a professor in Harvard College, and shortly after a second sale in the same neighborhood was effected; but it was not until 1886 that John Gilley made his first sale of land for summering purposes. In 5 the next year he made another sale, and in 1894 a third. The prices he obtained, though moderate compared with the prices charged at Bar Harbor or North-East Harbor, were forty or fifty times any price which had ever been put on his farm by the acre. Being thus provided with 10 what was for him a considerable amount of ready money, he did what all his like do when they come into possession of ready money-he first gave himself and his family the pleasure of enlarging and improving his house and other buildings, and then lent the balance on small mortgages 15 on village real estate. Suddenly he became a prosperous man, at ease, and a leader in his world. Up to this time, since his second marriage, he had merely earned a comfortable livelihood by diversified industry; but now he possessed a secured capital in addition to his farm and his 20 buildings. At last, he was highly content, but nevertheless ready as ever for new undertakings. His mind was active, and his eye and hand were steady.

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When three cottages had stood for several years on the eastern foreside of North-East Harbor, the nearest point 25 of the shore of Mount Desert to Sutton's Island, John Gilley, at the age of seventy-one, undertook to deliver at these houses milk, eggs, and fresh vegetables every day, and chickens and fowls when they were wanted. This undertaking involved his rowing in all weathers nearly 30 two miles from his cove to the landings of these houses, and back again, across bay waters which are protected

indeed from the heavy ocean swells, but are still able to produce what the natives call" a big chop." Every morning he arrived with the utmost punctuality, in rain or shine, calm or blow, and alone, unless it blew heavily from 5 the northwest (a head wind from Sutton's), or his little grandson his mate, as he called the boy-wanted to accompany him on a fine, still morning. Soon he extended his trips to the western side of North-East Harbor, where he found a much larger market for his goods than he had 10 found thirty-five years before, when he first delivered milk at Squire Kimball's tavern. This business involved what was new work for John Gilley, namely, the raising of fresh vegetables in much larger variety and quantity than he was accustomed to. He entered on this new work with 15 interest and intelligence, but was of course sometimes defeated in his plans by wet weather in spring, a drought in summer, or by the worms and insects which unexpectedly attacked his crops. On the whole he was decidedly successful in this enterprise undertaken at seventy-one. 20 Those who bought of him liked to deal with him, and he found in the business fresh interest and pleasure. Not many men take up a new out-of-door business at seventy, and carry it on successfully by their own brains and muscles. It was one of the sources of his satisfaction that he thus 25 supplied the two daughters who still lived at his house with a profitable outlet for their energies. One of these — the school-teacher was an excellent laundress, and the other was devoted to the work of the house and the farm, and was helpful in her father's new business. John Gilley 30 transported the washes from North-East Harbor and back again in his rowboat, and under the new conditions of the place washing and ironing proved to be more profitable than school-keeping.