Late In The Afternoon We Passed A Man On The Shore Fishing With A
Long Birch Pole, Its Silvery Bark
Left on, and a dog at his side,
rowing so near as to agitate his cork with our oars, and
Drive
away luck for a season; and when we had rowed a mile as straight
as an arrow, with our faces turned towards him, and the bubbles
in our wake still visible on the tranquil surface, there stood
the fisher still with his dog, like statues under the other side
of the heavens, the only objects to relieve the eye in the
extended meadow; and there would he stand abiding his luck, till
he took his way home through the fields at evening with his
fish. Thus, by one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants
into all her recesses. 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.
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