Book excerpt: How to Be a Hermit by American humorist Will Cuppy is a subjective and partly fictional account of Will's adventures as a hermit on Jones's Island in Wisconsin. Excerpt: "All was excitement that June morning among the clams of Jones's Island (pronounced, by your leave, in two good healthy syllables, thus: Jone'-sez). Softies by the bushel dug themselves deeper into the shoreward mud, and whimpering little quahogs out in their watery beds clung closer to their mothers as they heard the dread news relayed by their kinsfolk of Seaman's Neck, Black Banks Channel, Johnson's Flats, and High Hill Crick."