Might Help a Little

At one time there lived in a small house beside the Gulf Road in Williamstown a man called Cap'n Rice who sometimes imbibed too much for his own good. At the same time there was living up the hill from Cutter's Pond a man called Grampa Harrington, who walked to the village every day. One morning he stopped to see Cap'n Rice and found him unconscious and, as he thought, bad off. So Grampa hurried up to the doctor's in the village and told him that Cap'n Rice was going to die sure this time, that he must go right up to see him.

"Well, if he is going to die, why do you want me to go and see him?"

Said Grampa Harrington, "Humph, faith, I thought he might die a little quicker!"

-- Percy J. Jeffords, Williamstown

Source: Vermont History, edited by Leon W. Dean, President, Green Mountain Folklore Society, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, October 1956