intimate of your father's, and very kindly asked me to dinner.
Pray tell your father that the effects of his kindness to me
follow me everywhere. I became tired, however, of this pretty
town in the course of twenty-four hours, and crept along the
coast eastwards, amusing myself with looking out for objects of
antiquity, and sometimes making, or attempting to make, use of my
new angling-rod. By the way, old Cotton's instructions, by which
I hoped to qualify myself for one of the gentle society of
anglers, are not worth a farthing for this meridian. I learned
this by mere accident, after I had waited four mortal hours. I
shall never forget an impudent urchin, a cowherd, about twelve
years old, without either brogue or bonnet, barelegged, and with
a very indifferent pair of breeches--how the villain grinned in
scorn at my landing-net, my plummet, and the gorgeous jury of
flies which I had assembled to destroy all the fish in the river.
I was induced at last to lend the rod to the sneering scoundrel,
to see what he would make of it; and he had not only half filled
my basket in an hour, but literally taught me to kill two trouts
with my own hand. This, and Sam having found the hay and oats,
not forgetting the ale, very good at this small inn, first made
me take the fancy of resting here for a day or two; and I have
got my grinning blackguard of a piscator leave to attend on me,
by paying sixpence a day for a herd-boy in his stead.

A notably clean Englishwoman keeps this small house, and my
bedroom is sweetened with lavender, has a clean sash-window, and
the walls are, moreover, adorned with ballads of Fair Rosamond
and Cruel Barbara Allan. The woman's accent, though uncouth
enough, sounds yet kindly in my ear; for I have never yet
forgotten the desolate effect produced on my infant organs, when