Sketches New and Old


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But he worried through, and got well and started a farm. He fenced it  
in, and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it  
over to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere. He only said, in his  
patient way, that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to  
find out where it went to, though it was his opinion it went to  
Gibraltar.  
Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be  
out of the way when the sea came ashore again. It was a good mountain,  
and a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night  
and shook it all down. It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up  
with another man's property that he could not tell which were his  
fragments without going to law; and he would not do that, because his  
main object in going to St. Thomas was to be quiet. All that he wanted  
was to settle down and be quiet.  
He thought it all over, and finally he concluded to try the low ground  
again, especially as he wanted to start a brickyard this time. He bought  
a flat, and put out a hundred thousand bricks to dry preparatory to  
baking them. But luck appeared to be against him. A volcano shoved  
itself through there that night, and elevated his brickyard about two  
thousand feet in the air. It irritated him a good deal. He has been up  
there, and he says the bricks are all baked right enough, but he can't  
get them down. At first, he thought maybe the government would get the  
bricks down for him, because since government bought the island, it ought  
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