3. LETTER III.
Dear Doctor: There are some thing that grow
more certain with time and experience. Among
them, I am happier for finding out, is the affinity
which makes us friends. But there are other matters
which, for me, observation and knowledge only serve
to perplex, and among these is to know whose “education
has been neglected.” One of the first new
lights which broke on me, was after my first day in
France. I went to bed with a newborn contempt,
mingled with resentment, in my mind, toward my venerable
alma mater. The three most important branches
of earthly knowledge, I said to myself, are, to understand
French when it is spoken, to speak it so as to be
understood, and to read and write it with propriety
and ease. For accomplishment in the last, I could
refer to my diploma, where the fact was stated on indestructible
parchment. But, allowing it to speak
the truth (which was allowing a great deal), there
were the two preceding branches, in which (most
culpably to my thinking) “my education had been
neglected.” Could I have taken out my brains, and,
by simmering in a pot, have decocted Virgil, Homer,
Playfair, Dugald Stewart, and Copernicus, all five,
into one very small Frenchman — (what they had
taught me to what he could teach) — I should have
been content, though the fiend blew the fire.
I remember a beggarly Greek, who acquired an
ascendency over eight or ten of us, gentlemen and
scholars, travelling in the east, by a knowledge of
what esculents, growing wild above the bones of Miltiades,
were “good for greens.” We were out of provisions,
and fain to eat with Nebuchadnezzar. “Hang
grammar!” thought I, “here's a branch in which my
education has been neglected.” Who was ever called
upon in his travels to conjugate a verb? Yet here,
but for this degenerate Athenian, we had starved for
our ignorance of what is edible in plants.
I had occasion, only yesterday, to make a similar
remark. I was in a crowded church, listening to a
Fourth of July oration; what with one sort of caloric
and what with another, it was very uncomfortable, and
a lady near me became faint. To get her out, was
impossible, and there was neither fan, nor
sal volatile,
within twenty pews. The bustle, after awhile, drew
the attention of an uncombed Yankee in his shirtsleeves,
who had stood in the aisle with his mouth
open, gazing at the stage in front of the pulpit, and
wondering, perhaps, what particular difference between
sacred and profane oratory, required this painstaking
exhibition of the speaker's legs. Comprehending
the state of the case at a single glance, the
backwoodsman whipped together the two ends of his
riding-switch, pulled his cotton handkerchief tightly
over it, and, with this effective fan, soon raised a
breeze that restored consciousness to the lady, besides
cooling everybody in the vicinity. Here is a man,
thought I, brought up to have his wits ready for an
emergency.
His “education has not been neglected.”
To know nothing of sailing a ship, of farming, of
carpentering, in short, of any trade or profession, may
be a proper, though sometimes inconvenient ignorance.
I only speak of such deficiencies, as a modest
person will not confess without giving a reason — as a
man who can not swim will say he is liable to the
cramp in deep water. With some reluctance, lately,
I have brought myself to look after such dropped
threads in my own woof of acquisitions, in the hope
of mending them before they were betrayed by an exigency.
Trout-fishing is one of these. I plucked up
heart a day or two since, and drove to call upon a
young sporting friend of mine, to whom I confessed,
plump, I never had caught a trout. I knew nothing
of flies, worms, rods, or hooks. Though I had seen
in a book that “hog's down” was the material for the
May-fly, I positively did not know on what part of that
succulent quadruped the down was found.
“Positively?”
“Positively!”
My friend F. gravely shut the door to secure privacy
to my ignorance, and took from his desk a volume
— of flies! Here was new matter! Why, sir!
your trout-fishing is a politician of the first water!
Here were baits adapted to all the whims, weaknesses,
states of appetite, even counter-baits to the very cunning,
of the fish. Taking up the “Spirit of the
Times” newspaper, his authority in all sporting matters,
which he had laid down as I came in, he read a
recipe for the construction of one out of the many of
these seductive imitations, as a specimen of the labor
bestowed on them. “The body is dubbed with hog's
down, or light bear's hair mixed with yellow mohair,
whipped with pale floss silk, and a small strip of peacock's
herl for the head. The wings from the rayed
feathers of the mallard, dyed yellow; the hackle from
the bittern's neck, and the tail from the long hairs of
the sable or ferret.”
I cut my friend short midway in his volume, for,
ever since my disgust at discovering that the perplexed
grammar I had been whipped through was nothing
but the art of talking correctly, which I could do before
I began, I have had an aversion to rudiments.
“Frankly,” said I, “dear F. my education has been
neglected. Will you take me with you, trout-fishing,
fish yourself, answer my questions, and assist me to
pick up the science in my own scrambling fashion?”
He was good-natured enough to consent, and now,
dear Doctor, you see to what all this prologue was
tending. A day's trout-fishing may be a very common
matter to you, but the sport was as new to me as
to the trout. I may say, however, that of the two, I
took to the novelty of the thing more kindly.
The morning after was breezy, and the air, without
a shower, had become cool. I was sitting under the
bridge, with my heels at the water's edge, reading a
newspaper, while waiting for my breakfast, when a
slight motion apprized me that the water had invaded
my instep. I had been wishing the sun had drank less
freely of my brook, and within a few minutes of the
wish, it had risen, doubtless, from the skirt of a shower
in the hills beyond us. “Come!” thought I, pulling
my boots out of the ripple, “so should arrive favors
that would be welcome — no herald, and no weary expectation.
A human gift so uses up gratitude with
the asking and delaying.” The swallow heard the increased
babble of the stream, and came out of the air
like a cimeter to see if her little ones were afraid, and
the fussy lobster bustled about in his pool, as if there
were more company than he expected. “Semper paratus
is a good motto, Mr. Lobster!” “I will look
after your little ones, Dame Swallow!” I had scarce
distributed these consolations among my family, when
a horse crossed the bridge at a gallop, and the head of
my friend F. peered presently over the railing.
“How is your brook?”
“Rising, as you see!”
It was evident there had been rain west of us, and
the sky was still gray — good auspices for the fisher.
In half an hour we were climbing the hill, with such
contents in the wagon-box as my friend advised — the
debris of a roast pig and a bottle of hock supposed to
be included in the bait. As we got into the woods
above (part of my own small domain), I could scarce
help addressing my tall tenantry of trees. “Grow
away, gentlemen,” I would have said, had I been
alone; “I rejoice in your prosperity. Help yourselves
to the dew and the sunshine! If the showers are
not sent to your liking, thrust your roots into my
cellar, lying just under you, and moisten your clay
without ceremony — the more the better.” After all,
trees have pleasant ways with them. It is something
that they find their own food and raiment — something
that they require neither watching nor care — something
that they know, without almanac, the processions
of the seasons, and supply, unprompted and
unaided, the covering for their tender family of germes.
So do not other and less profitable tenants. But it is
more to me that they have no whims to be reasoned
with, no prejudices to be soothed, no garrulity to reply
or listen to. I have a peculiarity which this
touches nearly. Some men “make a god of their
belly;” some spend thought and cherishing on their
feet, faces, hair; some few on their fancy or their
reason. I am chary of my gift of speech. I hate to
talk but for my pleasure. In common with my fellow-men,
I have one faculty which distinguishes me
from the brute — an articulate voice. I speak (I am
warranted to believe) like my Maker and his angels.
I have committed to me an instrument no human art
has ever imitated, as incomprehensible in its fine and
celestial mechanism, as the reason which controls it.
Shall I breathe on this articulate wonder at every
fool's bidding? Without reasoning upon the matter
as I do now, I have felt indignant at the common adage,
“words cost nothing!” It is a common saying
in this part of the country, that “you may talk off ten
dollars in the price of a horse.” Those who have
travelled in Italy, know well that in procuring anything
in that country, from a post-carriage to a paper
of pins, you pay so much money, so much talk — the
less talk the more money. I commenced all my bargains
with a compromise — “You charge me ten scudi,
and you expect me to talk you down to five. I know
the price and the custom. Now, I will give you seven
and a half if you will let me off the talk.” I should
be glad if all buying and selling were done by signs.
It seems to me that talking on a sordid theme invades
and desecrates the personal dignity. The “scripta
verba manent” has no terrors for me. I could write
that without a thought, which I would put myself to
great inconveniences to avoid saying.
You, dear Doctor, among others, have often asked
me how long I should be contented in the country.
Comment, diable! ask, rather, how you are contented
in a town! Does not every creature, whose name
may have been mentioned to you — a vast congregation
of nothinglings — stop you in the street, and, will
you, nill you, make you perform on your celestial organ
of speech — nay, even choose the theme out of his
own littlenesses? When and how do you possess your
thoughts, and their godlike interpreter, in dignity and
peace? You are a man, of all others, worthy of the
unsuggestive listening of trees. Your coinage of
thought, profuse and worthy of a gift of utterance, is
alloyed and depreciated by the promiscuous admixtures
of a town. Who ever was struck with the
majesty of the human voice in the street? Yet, who
ever spoke, the meanest, in the solitude of a temple,
or a wilderness, or, in the stillness of night — wherever
the voice is alone heard — without an awe of his
own utterance — a feeling as if he had exercised a gift,
which had in it something of the supernatural?
The Indian talks to himself, or to the Great Spirit,
in the woods, but is silent among men. We take
many steps toward civilization as we get on in life,
but it is an error to think that the heart keeps up with
the manners. At least, with me, the perfection of existence
seems to be, to possess the arts of social life,
with the simplicity and freedom of the savage. They
talk of “unbridled youth!” Who would not have
borne a rein at twenty, he scorns at thirty? Who
does not, as his manhood matures, grow more impatient
of restraint — more unwilling to submit to the
conventional tyrannies of society — more ready, if there
were half a reason for it, to break through the whole
golden but enslaving mesh of society, and start fresh,
with Nature and the instincts of life, in the wilderness.
The imprisonment to a human eye may be as irksome
as a fetter — yet they who live in cities are never loosed.
Did you ever stir out of doors without remembering
that you were seen?
I have given you my thoughts as I went by my tall
foresters, dear Doctor, for it is a part of trout-fishing,
as quaint Izaak held it, to be stirred to musing and
revery by the influences of nature. In this free air,
too, I scorn to be tied down to “the proprieties.”
Nay, if it come to that, why should I finish what I
begin? Dame swallow, to be sure, looks curious to
hear the end of my first lesson with the angle. But
no! rules be hanged! I do not live on a wild brook to
be plagued with rhetoric. I will seal up my letter
where I am, and go a-field. You shall know what
we brought home in the basket when I write again.
