"A woman wrote that and jest look at it--one hundred and three chapters when it could all have been told in ten.

A writing woman never knows when to stop; that's the trouble.

The p'int of good writing is to know when to stop." "Mr.Ford wants to hear some of your stories, Captain Jim" said Anne.
"Tell him the one about the captain who went crazy and imagined he was the Flying Dutchman." This was Captain Jim's best story.

It was a compound of horror and humor, and though Anne had heard it several times she laughed as heartily and shivered as fearsomely over it as Mr.Ford did.

Other tales followed, for Captain Jim had an audience after his own heart.
He told how his vessel had been run down by a steamer; how he had been boarded by Malay pirates; how his ship had caught fire; how he helped a political prisoner escape from a South African republic; how he had been wrecked one fall on the Magdalens and stranded there for the winter; how a tiger had broken loose on board ship; how his crew had mutinied and marooned him on a barren island--these and many other tales, tragic or humorous or grotesque, did Captain Jim relate.