“Do you ever fish?”I asked.“Oh yes,I catch a mess now and then when I am lying by;good perch I catch.”“What's your bait?”“I catch shiners with fishworms,and bait the perch with them.”“You'd better go now,John,”said his wife,with glistening and hopeful face;but John demurred.
The shower was now over,and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised a fair evening;so I took my departure.When I had got without I asked for a drink,hoping to get a sight of the well bottom,to complete my survey of the premises;but there,alas!are shallows and quicksands,and rope broken withal,and bucket irrecoverable.Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected,water was seemingly distilled,and after consultation and long delay passed out to the thirsty one,-not yet suffered to cool,not yet to settle.Such gruel sustains life here,I thought;so,shutting my eyes,and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent,I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could.I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned.
As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain,bending my steps again to the pond,my haste to catch pickerel,wading in retired meadows,in sloughs and bog-holes,in forlorn and savage places,appeared for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and college;but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west,with the rainbow over my shoulder,and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air,from I know not what quarter,my Good Genius seemed to say,-Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day,-farther and wider,-and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving.Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.Rise free from care before the dawn,and seek adventures.Let the noon find thee by other lakes,and the night overtake thee everywhere at home.There are no larger fields than these,no worthier games than may here be played.Grow wild according to thy nature,like these sedges and brakes,which will never become English hay.Let the thunder rumble;what if it threaten ruin to farmers'crops?That is not its errand to thee.Take shelter under the cloud,while they flee to carts and sheds.Let not to get a living be thy trade,but thy sport.Enjoy the land,but own it not.Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are,buying and selling,and spending their lives like serfs.
O Baker Farm!
“Landscape where the richest element
Is a little sunshine innocent.”...
“No one runs to revel
On thy rail-fenced lea.”...
“Debate with no man hast thou,
With questions art never perplexed,
As tame at the first sight as now,
In thy plain russet gabardine dressed.”...
“Come ye who love,
And ye who hate,
Children of the Holy Dove,
And Guy Faux of the state,
And hang conspiracies
From the tough rafters of the trees!”
Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street,where their household echoes haunt,and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again;their shadows,morning and evening,reach farther than their daily steps.We should come home from far,from adventures,and perils,and discoveries every day,with new experience and character.
Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out John Field,with altered mind,letting go “bogging”ere this sunset.But he,poor man,disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string,and he said it was his luck;but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too.Poor John Field!-I trust he does not read this,unless he will improve by it,-thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new country,-to catch perch with shiners.It is good bait sometimes,I allow.With his horizon all his own,yet he a poor man,born to be poor,with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life,his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways,not to rise in this world,he nor his posterity,till their wading webbed bogtrotting feet get talaria to their heels.
