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Updated: April 30, 2025
Under our elective system there is no more honor in being a judge than in being a sheriff or a hog-reeve; but, when one is young and perhaps starving it may seem otherwise.
The support of such a nurse is usually maintained by voluntary subscription, but there seems to be no good reason why she should not be appointed and paid by the organized community as a local official. She is as much needed as a road-surveyor, surely as valuable as hog-reeve or pound-keeper.
I began a tremendous political career during the election, having made two stump speeches of an hour and a half each, after you went away, one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica Plain, with such eminent success that many invitations came to me from the surrounding villages, and if I had continued in active political life I might have risen to be vote-distributor, or fence-viewer, or selectman, or hog-reeve, or something of the kind."
Why," she continued earnestly, "Sol's been hog-reeve in aour taown ten years runnin'; and as for selec'-man, he'll die in office. Positions of trust come jest as nat'ral to him as reefin' in a gale of wind. Him and my man tuck to one another from the first." "Then you were not townsmen always," we suggested. "No, we wa'n't," was the reply. "My man and Sol met under kinder unusual circumstances.
"I never heard of any such devilish campaign management as this," grumbled the chairman. "You're talking to me as though I didn't know any more politics than a village hog-reeve." "Well, I'm the doctor in this case, providing I'm called," said the old man. "Just now I'm feeling of the pulse and making the diagnosis, and am getting ready to prescribe the dose.
Our sheriffs are made his deputies and the Russian Tsar becomes a hog-reeve beside him." He blurted out the purport of the measure, garnishing the recital with good, round oaths. "So you're loaded with that, are you?" inquired the elder Thornton. He was as careless of the presence of the listeners as the chairman had been. He began invective, but the young man broke in.
I began a tremendous political career during the election, having made two stump speeches of an hour and a half each, after you went away, one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica Plain, with such eminent success that many invitations came to me from the surrounding villages, and if I had continued in active political life I might have risen to be vote-distributor, or fence-viewer, or selectman, or hog-reeve, or something of the kind."
"When I came home to Palermo a year ago or so, after all my wanderin's, they wouldn't elect me so much as hog-reeve seemed to be down on me all 'round. But here heard what they did last night?" There was pride in his tones. "They elected me foreman of the Smyrna Ancient and Honer'ble Firemen's Association." "And you let 'em hornswoggle you into takin' it?" demanded the Cap'n.
An off-islander might suppose that the town crier was appointed in town meeting as is the fence-viewer, the sealer of weights and measures, the pound-keeper and the hog-reeve. But that is not so. Billy Clark evolved himself, so to speak, and the town patiently waits a second coming.
He looked about him and smiled a little, partly because people were gazing at him sympathetically, and partly over his own embarrassing plight. For he was a shy man. Nobody knew it but himself, and he was afraid that after to-day everybody would know. "Well, neighbors," said he, "I feel as if I was runnin' for President or hog-reeve or somethin', or goin' to speak in meetin'. But I ain't.
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