File #6093: "ms158_b3f003_007.04.pdf"

[No strike through:]

Dea. Sappiel Soccalexis (From notes taken at the time)

July 9, 1887 we were up to the Island and called on Deacon Sappiel. Both were old and Sappiel was very deaf. His wife said she was 80 {80} & he was probably older. Although living in a hovel & miserably poor they did not lack distinction of manner. They were good looking soft-voiced and very pleasant.

There was very little in the room except basket stuff and some half-made baskets and the remains of their dinner which was uninviting enough - some cold boiled potatoes, half a loaf of sour looking bread and some fish bones - for it was Friday.

Sappiel was very poorly dressed and was bare-footed, but he had a face like a saint's full of kindly grace. In spite of his age his eyes were not dimmed but kept up a merry twinkle.

Father says that when a little boy he remembers Sappiel came one morning early & was watching him in his nightdress playing with a tin cart and how his eyes twinkled.

Sappiel's face was much wrinkled and sunken but it did not lack loveliness and his smile lit it up beautifully. I have rarely

{Was the gr. father of Louis Soccalexis the ball player who as a boy had the same eyes