He was
very communicative, having all the easy garrulity of cheerful old
age, and I fancy was a little flattered by having an opportunity
of displaying his piscatory lore, for who does not like now and
then to play the sage?
He had been much of a rambler in his day, and had passed some
years of his youth in America, particularly in Savannah, where he
had entered into trade and had been ruined by the indiscretion of
a partner. He had afterwards experienced many ups and downs in
life until he got into the navy, where his leg was carried away
by a cannon-ball at the battle of Camperdown. This was the only
stroke of real good-fortune he had ever experienced, for it got
him a pension, which, together with some small paternal property,
brought him in a revenue of nearly forty pounds. On this he
retired to his native village, where he lived quietly and
independently, and devoted the remainder of his life to the
"noble art of angling."
I found that he had read Izaak Walton attentively, and he seemed
to have imbibed all his simple frankness and prevalent
good-humor. Though he had been sorely buffeted about the world,
he was satisfied that the world, in itself, was good and
beautiful. Though he had been as roughly used in different
countries as a poor sheep that is fleeced by every hedge and
thicket, yet he spoke of every nation with candor and kindness,
appearing to look only on the good side of things; and, above
all, he was almost the only man I had ever met with who had been
an unfortunate adventurer in America and had honesty and
magnanimity enough to take the fault to his own door, and not to
curse the country.
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