When Nelson Bryant was managing editor of the Claremont, N.H. Daily Eagle he enlivened his telling of bedtime stories to his two young sons with the adventures of a Martha's Vineyard Island youngster he called, "Mill Pond Joe." "I was Mill Pond Joe, and my yarns were based on actual events during my boyhood. I spent fifteen years as managing editor of the Daily Eagle and devoted another thirty to writing an outdoors column for...