Lest "Boomsher" seem an unusual surname, it must be explained that the actual
name was French and could not be coped with by Edgewood or Pleasant River,
being something (luite as impossible to spell as to pronounce. As the family
had lived for the last few years somewhere near the Killick Cranberry Meadows,
they were called--and completely described in the calling--the Crambry
fool-family. A talented and much traveled gentleman who once stayed over night
at the Edgewood tavern, proclaimed it his opinion that Boomsher had been
gradually corrupted from Beaumarchais. When he wrote the word on his visiting
card and showed it to Mr. Wiley, Old Kennebec had replied, that in the
judgment of a man who had lived in large places and seen a turrible lot o'
life, such a name could never have been given either to a Christian or a
heathen family, that the way in which the letters was thrown together into it,
and the way in which they was sounded when read out loud, was entirely ag'in
reason. It was true, he said, that Beaumarchais, bein' such a fool-name, might
'a' be'n invented a-purpose for a fool-family, but he would n't hold even with
callin' 'em Boomsher; Crambry was well enough for 'em an' a sight easier to
speak.
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