A Farmer’s Life 
It came this way. My uncle made me one of 
the executors of his will, incidentally requesting 
me to make quite sure that he was not buried 
before he was really dead. That betrayed, in- 
deed, a family fear. His father’s burial had been 
deferred ten days or so; his two uncles had lain 
dead, I am told (they died of diabetes), each 
almost a month unburied. I was therefore not 
surprised at my uncle’s request, and of course 
readily assented. Indeed, no reflection on his 
own sons and daughters was at all implied. John 
Smith was only indulging his taste for talking 
seriously and ceremoniously, while he paid me 
the compliment of admitting me, as it were, into 
the inner circle of his affections. That was the 
meaning of his odd request; and soon after his 
death I was allowed to feel it. Because of the 
close friendship between him and me, I was 
given a little book which he had treasured, in 
the belief that I should treasure it too. 
I did. A duodecimo it was, long associated 
with John Smith’s family—an account of the 
Royal George lost in 1782, and of the abortive 
attempts to “weigh the vessel up” in 1783. 
This tiny volume, published at Portsea by 
S. Horsey in 1843, was bound in thinnest boards 
of oak said to have been recovered (truly enough 
I dare say) from the sunk timbers. ‘Tom Black- 
burn, a sailor, had given the little curiosity to his 
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