Captain Furber complained and fulminated at the surplus offerings of money, piles of clothing, fur hats, flowered weskits, boots and shoes that accumulated in his best roomthe room unused, except for funerals and weddings, in the front left corner of every large Portsmouth house. No matter how rapidly Widow Hubbard and Widow Macklin sorted them into piles of threeone pile for ourselves, one for Langman, White and Mellen in the Motley house, and the third for Graystock, Saver and Gray in the Swaine housethey continued to accumulate, so that Captain Furber, at Neal's suggestion, tacked to his front door a card reading, "
The Grateful Survivors of Boon Island Have More Than Enough
."
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Another thing for which Neal was responsible was the writing of letters of thanks to those who had left their names with their offerings. "People like to be thanked," Neal said, "but my father said most people forget to teach their children to say 'thank you.' So if Captain Furber will buy us some paper, I'll write the letters."
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More people came to see us or call on us than I would have believed lived in Portsmouth. Merchants, sea captains, tavern keepers, King's Councillors, Lieutenant Governor John Wentworth, John Plaisted, Theodore Atkinson, Colonel William Pepperrell, Richard Nason, Robert Almory, Roger Swaine, Edward Toogoodfine men: the finest, barring my father and Captain Dean and Swede Butler, I ever met.
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Every one of the men who called upon us without being turned away by Dr. Packer was solicitous about our welfare, and in a few weeks' time I had more offers of positions than I would have had in England in half a century.
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