Dry Goods and General Store," Mr. Beriah Higgins, proprietor. Beriah
was postmaster and the post office was in his store. The male citizen
of middle age or over, seeking opportunity for companionship and chat,
usually went first to the depot, sat about in the waiting room until the
train came in, superintended that function, then sojourned to the post
office until the mail was sorted, returning later, if he happened to be
a particular friend of the depot master, to sit and smoke and yarn until
Captain Sol announced that it was time to "turn in."

When Mr. Phinney entered the little waiting room he found it already
tenanted. Captain Sol had not yet arrived, but official authority was
represented by "Issy" McKay--his full name was Issachar Ulysses Grant
McKay--a long-legged, freckled-faced, tow-headed youth of twenty, who,
as usual, was sprawled along the settee by the wall, engrossed in
a paper covered dime novel. "Issy" was a lover of certain kinds of
literature and reveled in lurid fiction. As a youngster he had, at
the age of thirteen, after a course of reading in the "Deadwood Dick
Library," started on a pedestrian journey to the Far West, where,
being armed with home-made tomahawk and scalping knife, he contemplated
extermination of the noble red man. A wrathful pursuing parent had
collared the exterminator at the Bayport station, to the huge delight of
East Harniss, young and old. Since this adventure Issy had been famous,
in a way.

He was Captain Sol Berry's assistant at the depot. Why an assistant
was needed was a much discussed question. Why Captain Sol, a retired
seafaring man with money in the bank, should care to be depot master
at ten dollars a week was another. The Captain himself said he took the
place because he wanted to do something that was "half way between a
loaf and a job." He employed an assistant at his own expense because