This man was the last of our townsmen
whom we saw, and we silently through him bade adieu to our
friends.
The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men
are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The
pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of
other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in
which I myself have lived. Perchance he is not confounded by many
knowledges, and has not sought out many inventions, but how to
take many fishes before the sun sets, with his slender birchen
pole and flaxen line, that is invention enough for him. It is
good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter. Some men are
judges these August days, sitting on benches, even till the court
rises; they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons and
between meals, leading a civil politic life, arbitrating in the
case of Spaulding _versus_ Cummings, it may be, from highest noon
till the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman,
meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the same summer's
sun, arbitrating in other cases between muckworm and shiner, amid
the fragrance of water-lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading his
life many rods from the dry land, within a pole's length of where
the larger fishes swim.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48