But everybody liked him. Drunk
or sober, he was the best company in the world, full of anecdote
flavored with a shrewd and not ill-natured wit. There was a
manufacturer in a village near Worcester who had failed in
business owing large debts all about. He was a man of enormous
bulk, the fattest man in the whole region round-about, weighing
considerably over three hundred. He left the State to avoid
his creditors, and dwelt in New York, keeping himself out
of their reach. At last it was discovered by a creditor that
he used to come to Worcester in the train which arrived from
New York on the Western Railroad shortly before midnight Saturday,
go over to his old home, which was not far off, stay there
Sunday, when he was exempt from arrest, and take the cars
Sunday night at about the same hour for New York. Accordingly
old Jonathan Day, a veteran deputy-sheriff, armed with an
execution, lay in wait for him one dark and stormy Saturday
night at the little old wooden depot of the Western Railroad,
some hundred or two feet from Grafton Street. The train
came in, and the debtor got out.
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