It was during an Indian-summer week of hearty, brown
October, that Oliver Paul, Ned Locus, and I, once made a
shooting party, and drove Ned's sorrel mares to Jim Smith's,
at Scio, and thence bent canvass for the Fire Islands, to try
the brant.

Before going on with my story, it may, perhaps, be dutiful
in me, and desirable on behalf of people who have never studied
geography, to specify the condition of the said Islands.
We will accomplish this cheerful office, straightway. In brief,
then, they made their first appearance in the country, after a
hard earthquake, some five or six hundred years ago, on the

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southern coast of Matowacs, latitude forty degrees and forty
minutes north; longitude, seventy-three degrees and one
minute west; near the occidental end of Raccoon beach.
They are two in number, and contain in the whole, at low
water, about fifty acres of marsh and mud, disposed with irregular
and careless grace, and scalloped into jutting points
and circling bays. The principal inhabitants are gulls, and
meadow-hens. The climate is saline and salubrious. The
chief products of the soil are, sedge-grass, birds' eggs, and
calms. Yet, not unknown to “human face divine,” nor ignorant
of the lofty enterprise, and gentle mercies, of trade, do
those points and bays lie profitless. For, there John Alibi salutes
the fading morning star, and the coming sun, with the heavy
vollies of his yet cherished flint lock muskets; and the tumbling
wild fowl, splashing into the midst of his stool, bleed out
their murdered lives, while he, reloading, counts the profits of
his eager shot, and sees, with his mind's eye, the gasping victims
already picked, and stalled in Fulton market. Hence,
live and flourish, all the little Alibis; and hence, the princess
widow, gentle mistress of the soil, rejoices in a welcome revenue.

Brother sportsmen, let me introduce to your judicious affection,
my friend and comrade, Oliver Paul.—Oliver. the
people. He is a plain unpretending tiller, and a lord, moreover,
of the land; a Quaker, you see—regular Hicksite—and
like all friends that I ever yet knew, he is sometimes wet and
sometimes dry. Still, he is semper idem—always the same—
and has been such for fifty years—in hot, and in cold—in total
abstinence, and in generous imbibition. As Oliver is
warm-hearted, I love him; as he is a good shot, I honor him;
and as he can pull a discreet oar, foretell, to a certainty,
where the wind is going to be on the morrow, and mark down

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a crippled bird more truly than any man in the republic, I always
get him to go with me upon my shooting expeditions.
Oliver has but few eccentric qualities. His religion is as the
religion of Hicksites “in general:” his philosophy is comprised
in the sententious apothegm, which is applied upon all
occasions and occurrences, “some pork will boil that way:”
his morals—; he is a bachelor, and though of a most unmatrimonial
composition, he is incessantly talking of taking a wife,
or, as he terms it, “flying in” with a woman. Though from
principle, and the rules of his creed, opposed to both national
and individual wars, yet, strike him, and he will not turn to
you his other cheek, for a repetition of the temptation. He
may not strike back, but—as they do at yearly meeting, when
friends cannot agree upon the choice of a clerk—he will most
certainly shove you, as he would say, “like rotten.” His most
characteristic trait is his superintendence of the morals and
manners of his neighbors. So bountiful is his benevolence,
that to protect the reputation of a friend, he scruples not to
unlace and scarify his own. Walk out with him, and meet a
ruddy-cheeked Rosina, with a coquettish eye, that puts the
very devil into you, “don't look, don't look, boys,” he'll cry,
and dig his elbows into your side to enforce obedience to the
precept, while he himself is staring into her face, until the
morning-tint vermilion of her virgin-blushes is lost in the scarlet—
and—and—confusion—and—somebody finish that;—and
then, he'll drain the last drop of liquor from the jug, for the
sole, charitable purpose of preserving his brother sportsman's
nerves steady. You know him now, and I have nothing more
to say, except to warn you, as a friend, if you should ever be
out with him in the bay, on a cold November day, on short
allowance, watch your fluids.

Ned Locus.—Ned is a young gentleman, who spends his

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money, and shoots, and fishes, and tells tough yarns for a living.
His uncle manages his estate, for although Ned is now
of age, yet he don't want to deprive the old man of the commissions;
and, besides, ever since Ned got his bachelor's diploma,
he has forgotten his Greek and Trigonometry, without
which, no man can be an executor. Ned, although not strictly
pious, delights not in things of this world. Mere terrestrial
axioms know no lodgement in his confidence. His meditations
and labors are in another sphere, an universe of his own
creation. And yet, he believes himself to be a plain, practical,
matter-of-fact man; one who has no fancy, who never
tells his dreams for truths, nor adds a single bird or fish in the
story of the sum total of his successes. There is no design,
upon his part, in the choice of his place of existence, or the
description of his sensations and actions. The fault, if any,
lies in his original composition; his father and mother are to
be blamed for it, not he. His eyes and ears are not as the
eyes and ears of other men, and, truly, so is not his tongue.
There is an investiture of unearthliness about every thing he
sees and hears. By day, and by night, he is contemplating a
constant mirage. He never admired a woman on account of
her having flesh, blood, bosom, lips, and such things; but,
while he gazed, he worshipped some fairy incarnation, that
enveloped and adorned her with unearthly grace, and hypercelestial
sweetnesses. Even in his reading he is an original.
He never gives to a fine passage in Shakespeare its ordinary
interpretation; but the brilliant light of the poet's thought, is
crooked, and thrown off, and sometimes made a caricature
rainbow of, by the refraction of his cloudy imagination. His
aunt sent him, one new-year's day, when he was at college,
an old copy of the Septuagint, which she had picked up at the
auction sale of the effects of a demised ecclesiastic. On

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receiving the present, he wrote upon the fly-leaf, what he considered
to be the apposite sentiments of Mark Antony—

“Let but the commons hear this testament,
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read;”—

That was Ned, all over. With such a constitution, it is quite
possible that he may seem, to those men who always want the
actual proof of a thing, chapter and verse, to be rather given
to romance. Ned hates such people. So do I. They are
without faith, earth-bound, and live by sense alone, grossly.

I am—I don't know what I am, exactly. I'm a distant relative
of Ned,—a blossom off one of the poor branches of the
family. I “expect” I'm a kind of a loafer. I'm Ned's friend,
and he's mine. I'm his moralist, and minister, and tiger, and
kind of tutor, and he lends me money. I certainly intend to
repay him; though I don't owe him much now, by the by, for
I have won all the bets we have made lately, as might naturally
be presumed—Ned always bets so wildly. We keep
along pretty square. Ned's a good fellow. If I only say,
“Ned, I'm rather short, to-day, how are you?” he'll give me
a draft on his uncle, for a cool hundred. We play picquet,
too, now and then, and cassino, and all-fours, a little. I can
beat him at those games. I keep my account at the Tea-water
Pump. I have thought of getting into some kind of business,—
I think I am calculated for it; but my affection for Ned will
not permit me to leave him. We were both “licked” by Joe
Nelson, the blind schoolmaster, and hectored by his twinheaded
understrapper; and we were classmates in old Columbia,
and put into practice the doctrines of forces, and action
and reaction at Robinson's, during intermission hours, and
were always together. So we ride about and take our comfort.

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There was one eminent qualification, which was possessed
by each of the trio above outlined, in monopoly without statute.
We could each cut down a leather-head, flying by a point of
marsh before a strong north-wester, sixty yards off, nineteen
times out of twenty. That is a fact; and there are not many
men beside us and John Verity, and Raynor Rock, who are
up to that performance. Uncle Ben Raynor could do it once,
and Dan thinks he can do it now; but, as Peter Probasco says,
“I have my doubts.” Multitudinous sportsmen may shoot
well, but none but a man of true genius can shoot splendidly.
Shooting, in its refinement and glory, is not an acquired art.
A man must be a born shot as much as he must be a born
poet. You may learn to wing-break a starved pigeon, sprung
out of a trap, fifteen or twenty yards off, but to stop a cock in
a thick brake, where you can see him only with the eye of
faith; or to kill a vigorous coot, cutting the keen air, at day-dreak,
at the rate of three miles a minute, requires an eye, and
a hand, and a heart, which science cannot manufacture. The
doctrine of Pliny, the naturalist, contained in his chapter on
black ducks, is correct beyond a question. “Legere et scribere,
est pœdagogi, sed optime collineare, est Dei.” Reading
and writing are inflicted by schoolmasters, but a crack shot is
the work of God. “Them's my sentiments,” as Peter again
says.

The same doctrine has been truly declared of angling. No
genuine piscator ever tabernacled at Fireplace, or Stump-pond,
who could not exhibit proofs of great natural delicacy, and
strength of apprehension—I mean of “things in general,” including
fish. But the “vis vivida animi,” the “os magna sonans,”
the “manus mentis,” the divine rapture of the seduction
of a trout, how few have known the apotheosis! The
creative power of genius can make a feather-fly live, and move,

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and have being; and a wisely-stricken fish gives up the ghost
in transports. That puts me in mind of a story of Ned Locus.
Ned swears that he once threw a fly so far, and delicately,
and suspendedly, that just as it was dropping upon the water,
after lying a moment in the scarcely-moving air, as though it
knew no law of gravity, it actually took life and wings, and
would have flown away, but that an old four-pounder, seeing
it start, sprang and jumped at it, full a foot out of his element,
and changed the course of the insect's travel, from the upper
air to the bottom of his throat. That is one of Ned's, and I
do not guarantee it; but such a thing might be. Insects are
called into being in a variety of mysterious ways, as all the
world knows; for instance, the animalculæ that appear in the
neighborhood of departed horses; and, as Ned says, if death
can create life, what is the reason a smart man can't? Good
fishermen are generally great lawyers; ecce signa, Patrick
Henry, and Daniel Webster. I have known this rule, however,
to have exceptions. But the true sportsman is always,
at least, a man of genius, and an honest man. I have either
read or heard some one say, and I am sure it is the fact, that
there never was an instance of a sincere lover of a dog, gun,
and rod, being sent to bridewell or penitentiary. Jails they
did whilom affect, before John Doe and Richard Roe were
banished from the state, and when an unhappy devil might be
held to bail to answer for his misfortunes; but although they
have experienced much affliction under the issue of “non assumpsit,”
never was there one who suffered judgment upon
the finding of a jury on the plea of “not guilty.” If I were
governor, and knew a case, I would exert the pardoning power
without making any inquiry. I should determine, without
waiting to hear a single fact, that the man was convicted by
means of perjury. There is a plain reason for all this. A

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genuine sportsman must possess a combination of virtues,
which will fill him so full that no room can be left for sin to
squeeze in. He must be an early riser—to be which is the
beginning of all virtue—ambitious, temperate, prudent, patient
of toil, fatigue, and disappointment, courageous, watchful, intent
upon his business, always ready, confident, cool, kind to
his dog, civil to the girls, and courteous to his brother sportsmen.
Hold up.

This discourse hath brought us in front of the fishing-hut of
Raynor Rock, near the lighthouse on the beach. Rest thee,
now, most weary reader,—for we have had a long sail, with a
head wind and a wet sheet,—while I rehearse the causes that
have brought Sir Raynor, and his crew of twenty picked boys,—
picked up along shore,—down to this desolate spot.
Streaked bass and wild fowl are the motives of their sojournment.
The former are sparkling in the surf, and making love
to, and eating up each other; the latter cluster in the inlets,
and stream above the breakers. The net carries into captivity
them of the sea; powder and shot superinduce widowhood
and orphanage upon the tenants of the air. Fulton Market,
and the cooks of the board of aldermen know the rest. Hence
arise wise ordinances and stomachs sleek; and Raynor and
the boys are glad in the silver music that rings in their presseddown
pockets. “Proba merx facile emptorem invenit.”

We arrived at Raynor's just about dark, and the boys had
all turned in, to get a good nap, before the tide served for drawing
the seine,—all but Raynor, who was half sitting, half lying
on the plentiful straw by the fire in the centre of the hut,
smoking his quiet pipe. We entered, and grasped the welcoming
hand of as clever a fellow—both Yankee and English
clever—as ever sat foot on Matowacs.

“Hullow! hullow! hullow! wake up, boys! wake up!

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Here's Mr. Cypress, and Ned Locus, and Oliver Paul!—By
gad, I'm glad to see ye.—How are ye! how are ye!”

How d'ye do! how d'ye do, fellows! Give us your fist,
Raynor. Peter, what the d—l brought you down here! Dan,
alive? how are ye, how are ye all?

At Raynor's call, the boys sprang up from their straw and
pea-jackets, upon which they had been snoring in their sleeping
places around the floor of the mansion, and rushed upon
us with unaffected gratulation. The story of the reception
can be briefly told. There were three of us, and twenty of
them, and we all and each jointly and severally said, “how
have you been? Pretty well, thank ye;” and shook hands.
Make the calculation yourself. While you are cyphering it
out, I'll stop and rest.

p138-045

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