558 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



Nes. The same, thougli a very different kind of person 

 from the one you may have in your mind's eye ; besides, he is 

 not " Mister," he is Major Jack Dade. He is or was, for I don't 

 know that he is alive now, one of " the first gentlemen of Vir- 

 ginia, sir" ; a relic of that ancient order who were the last to 

 leave off blue coat, buff waistcoat, and drab trousers ; who 

 were "aufaW'' in politics and card-playing, bacon, mutton, 

 Madeira, and old whiskey ; and could tell you the pedigree of 

 every race-horse between tide- water and Blue Ridge ; besides 

 being pretty well satisfied with their own pedigree. Jack was 

 one of them ; but with all his early advantages, as his father 

 used to say of him, "he couldn't take laming^ Major Dade 

 was a captain at the battle of Bladensburg, " sir." General 

 Winder sent him with his company through an extensive 

 cornfield to reconnoitre the British brig Vulture, then lying 

 in the Potomac, and he would have made a successful recon- 

 noissance if it had not been for the panic which seized his 

 militia. In telling the story. Major Jack says they thought 

 they heard the British troops stealing upon them, when it 

 was only the north-west wind rustling the dry tops of the 

 " ^aww," and, as a matter of course, when they ran, he had to 

 follow them, "sir." The major is opposed to all kinds of inno- 

 vations, especially improved farming and imported cattle. He 

 condemns short horns and Berkshire hogs, af&rming posi- 

 tively that there is no bacon so good as that made from an 

 old-fashioned " fiddle-faced hog." 



Nor. I think I saw him once at the town of Warrenton, 

 and that he came with Charley Randolph, another old relic, 

 in a coach and four; though, by the bv, the coach, which was 

 a little the worse for wear, had but three horses to it, and 

 there was a calf-skin stretched across the back of the coach 

 (the tail hanging down) to keep out the weather. The old gen- 

 tleman struck me as being fond of a noise, for I never saw a 



