10 FISHES AND FISHING. 



have heard my father say, none of these lines were 

 ever totally lost. 



Owing to some legal disputes about the quantity of 

 water by millers higher up the river, the mills, man 

 sion-house belonging, with its delightful gardens and 

 grounds, where I had for the first six years of my 

 life revelled in abundance of the most choice wall, 

 and other fruits, and sat down daily to an amply 

 supplied table, whereon fish, poultry, and every 

 vegetable and fruit which the skill and industry of a 

 professed gardener and assistants kept on the premi 

 ses, in proper season, could produce, we removed to a 

 village thirty-five miles distant. Immediately after 

 my father left the house, it was pulled down, and 

 about six years ago, when I visited the spot, there 

 was a railway station erected thereon ; a heap of 

 rubbish as high as a moderate-sized house, occupied 

 the place of the once beautiful grounds and garden, 

 and the mill-pond, which used in my infancy to have 

 some graceful swans on it, and was a large expanse of 

 water, was now an expanded sheet of mud, with a 

 rivulet of water meandering through it. 



Before I say anything further of the miserable 

 change the whole family experienced by the removal, 

 a few reminiscences occur to me of this my native 

 place. 



When I was about four years old, I went to school 



