"If it's any harm I won't ask it," the easy-going mariner spoke, "but
air you two Cannons ary kin to ole Patty Cannon?"
Mr. Cannon smiled.
"In Adam all sinned--there we may have been connected," he said. "The
question you ask may one day be actionable, sir. The Cannons are a
numerous people in our region, of fair substance, such as we have, but
they showed nothing to vary the equation of subsistence here till there
arose the mother of Isaac and Jacob Cannon. She was a remarkable woman;
unassisted, she procured the charter for Cannon's Ferry, and made the
port settlement of that name by the importance her ferry acquired; and
when she died there were found in her house nine hundred dollars in
silver--for she never would take any paper money--the earnings of that
sequestered ferry, to start her sons on their career. She knew the
peculiar character of some of her neighbors--how lightly _meum_ and
_tuum_ sat upon their fears or consciences--but she kept no guard except
her own good gray eyes and dauntless heart over that accumulating pile
of little sixpences, for there was but one spirit as bold as she in all
this region of the world--"
"And that, I reckon," observed Jimmy Phoebus, "was ole Patty Cannon
herself."
Mr. Jacob Cannon slightly bowed his head, and spoke aloud from an inner
communion:
"Forgive me, mother, that I make the comparison! Thy frugal oil, that
burned with pure and lonely widow's flame at Cannon's Ferry window, the
traveller hailed with comfort in his heart, and blessed the enterprise.
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