He accompanied the sheriff on all journeys entailing
serving of papers and other embarrassing duties common to the law.
On one occasion, when the two lawyers of the village held an investigation
before Trial Justice Simeon Porter, they waited an hour because Jot
Bascom did not come. They knew that something was amiss, but it was
only on reflection that they remembered that Jot was not indispensable.
He went with all paupers to the Poor Farm, and never missed a town meeting.
He knew all the conditions attending any swapping of horses that
occurred within a radius of twenty miles,--the terms of the trade
and the amount paid to boot. He knew who owed the fish-man and who owed
the meat-man, and who could not get trusted by either of them.
In fact, so far as the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipresence
could be vested in a faulty human creature, they were present in Jot Bascom.
That he was quite unable to attend conscientiously to home duties,
when overborne by press of public service, was true. When Diadema Bascom
wanted kindling split, wood brought in, the cows milked, or the pigs fed,
she commonly found her spouse serving humanity in bulk.
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