Captain Eli's Best Ear by Frank R. Stockton

The little seaside village of Sponkannis lies so quietly upon a / protected spot on our Atlantic coast that it makes no more stir in the / world than would a pebble which, held between one's finger and thumb, / should be dipped below the surface of a millpond and then dropped. / About the post-office and the store -- both under the same roof -- the / greater number of the houses cluster, as if they had come for their / week's groceries, or were waiting for the mail, while toward the west / the dwellings become fewer and fewer, until at last the village blends / into a long stretch of sandy coast and scrubby pine-woods. Eastward / the village ends abruptly at the foot of a windswept bluff, on which no / one cares to build.

Among the last houses in the western end of the village stood two neat, / substantial dwellings, one belonging to Captain Eli Bunker, and the / other to Captain Cephas Dyer. These householders were two very / respectable retired mariners, the first a widower about fifty, and the / other a bachelor of perhaps the same age, a few years more or less / making but little difference in this region of weather-beaten youth and / seasoned age.