NINTH DAY.] REFLECTIONS. 281 



throbbing brow. But, alas ! this cannot be ; and 

 even you cannot have two springs in life though 

 I have no doubt you have fishing days, in which the 

 feelings of youth return, and that your autumn has a 

 more vernal character than mine. 



POIET. I do not think Halieus had ever any 

 season, except a perpetual and gentle spring : for the 

 tones of his mind have been always so quiet, it has 

 been so little scorched by sunshine, and so little 

 shaken by winds, that, I think, it may be compared 

 to that sempivernal climate fabled of the Hesperides, 

 where the same trees produced at once buds, leaves, 

 blossoms, and fruits. 



HAL. Nay, my friends, spare me a little, spare 

 my gray hairs. I have not perhaps abused my youth 

 so much as some of my friends, but all things 

 that you have known, I have known ; and if I have 

 not been so much scorched by the passions from 

 which so many of my acquaintances have suffered, 

 I owe it rather to the constant employment of a 

 laborious profession, and to the exertions called for 

 by the hopes, wants, and wishes of a rising family, 

 than to any merits of my own, either moral or 

 constitutional. For my health, I may thank my 

 ancestors after my God, and I have not squandered 

 what was so bountifully given ; and though I do not 

 expect like our arch-patriarch, Walton, to number 



