Will Thing

Will Thing is James Duke’s aged coachman, a lifelong worker in the Duke stable whose attachment to Boston becomes clear when James plans to move the household to Detroit. His refusal to relocate gives the family’s commercial and domestic expansion a human counterpoint: the move that James imagines as a new beginning is, for Will, a break with the place where he was born and has worked all his life.

Identity and Work

Will appears in the household’s everyday economy as James’s longtime coachman. In the early-August scene, James has just bought Throstle, a chestnut Hanoverian saddle mount, and rises to go to the stables for a half hour of horse talk with Will. The brief detail places Will within the practical routines of James’s life and suggests a familiarity built through years of service, rather than introducing him as a new employee or a figure of the business world.

Refusal to Leave Boston

When James and his family discuss their intended Detroit home, Will states plainly that he will not go with them. He was born in Boston, he says, and will stay there; he has worked all his life for James’s father and James in the stable, and means to remain in it. His answer makes the stable more than a workplace: it is the fixed setting of his working life and his chosen point of continuity as the household prepares to move.

Loyalty and the Family’s Move

James tells Will that the family intends to sell everything and asks him to consider the possibility that he might dislike the new residents. Will replies that liking them is not his concern and that he will get along. The exchange distinguishes his position from a personal dispute with the prospective occupants: he is not claiming the house or judging its future residents, but declining to leave his established life. James is disappointed and still hopes to persuade him, perhaps because Will has not understood that the horses, too, are bound for Detroit.

Narrative Significance

Will’s insistence on staying in Boston sets a modest human limit against the Dukes’ plans for relocation and expansion. James’s future-facing household plans include a new Detroit house, designed around a hilltop view toward Lake Saint Clair; Will’s answer instead anchors the scene in birthplace, long service, and the familiar stable. The contrast does not resolve the question of whether he will ultimately move: the episode ends with James still hoping to prevail.