Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/164

 on Prisons and on Accounts. When the Court and jail were moved to Lowell, Staples became an auctioneer, real estate man, and farmer, but will be remembered perhaps chiefly as a kindly neighbour, advisor of unpractical people of all degrees in our village family, especially of widows and lone women. He called almost every one by their first names and it was not taken amiss. He was a genial member of the Social Circle. Once at one of their evening gatherings, the late Judge Keyes spoke of the interesting composition of the Club, — two ministers, three judges, one lawyer, one doctor, and so on through the list, ending “and one gentleman.” Immediately the chorus “Who's that, Judge?” rose, for we all were sure we were otherwise accounted for. “Why, Sam there. He's our one retired gentleman,” said the judge. When, a few years later, in the winter of 1894-95, we lost Judge Hoar, Rev. Mr. Reynolds, and Mr. Staples, we felt as if a tripod upholding Concord's high standards and kindly, simple life had fallen.

Page 66, note 1. The late George Bradford Bartlett remembered Thoreau's coming often to his father, good Doctor Bartlett's house. He did so the night after his release from prison. George felt as if he were seeing a Siberian exile, or John Bunyan.

He said that Henry often did carpentry jobs, etc., for his father. The Doctor furnished a