"OUR BROAD" 263 



for the support of himself and family, and lived in 

 a truly primitive manner. I particularly remember 

 one hero of this description. * Our Broad,' as he 

 always called the extensive pool by which his 

 cottage stood, was his microcosm his world ; the 

 islands in it were his gardens of the Hesperides ; 

 its opposite extremity his ultima Thule. Wherever 

 his thoughts wandered, they could not get beyond 

 the circle of his beloved lake ; indeed, I never knew 

 them aberrant but once, when he informed me, with 

 a doubting air, that he had sent his wife and his 

 two eldest children to a fair at a country village 

 two miles off, that their ideas might expand by 

 travel. As he sagely observed, they had never been 

 away from c our Broad.' I went into his house at 

 the dinner-hour, and found the whole party going 

 to fall to most thankfully upon a roasted herring- 

 gull, killed, of course, on 'our Broad.' His life 

 presented no vicissitudes but an alternation of 

 marsh employment. In winter, after his day's 

 reed-cutting, he might be regularly found posted at 

 nightfall, waiting for the flight of fowl, or paddling 

 after them on the open water. With the first warm 

 days of February he launched his fleet of trimmers, 

 pike finding a ready sale at his own door to those 

 who bought them to sell again in the Norwich 

 .market. As soon as the pike had spawned and 



