78 FISHING FOR PLEASURE 



presents no change, though, doubtless, many 

 an old tree has made way for one of younger 

 birth; the old cottages have in some instances 

 been replaced by new ones; some of the old 

 black and white houses, notably the old vicarage, 

 which is said to trace its ancestry to the thirteenth 

 century, being freshly whitened and blackened, 

 add greatly to the beauty of the village, and give 

 it an air of smartness to which it was not so well 

 entitled in the old days. My memory carries me 

 back more particularly to the old schoolmaster, 

 the patriarch of the village. He was a venerable 

 old man when I first knew him, of medium 

 height, square built, a broad and expansive fore- 

 head overshadowed a pair of merry gray eyes; 

 he was an old boy of infinite wit and humour, 

 and abounding in self-conceit. Everything about 

 him and his surroundings were of the most op- 

 timistic order. His garden was the " frummest " ' 

 and most productive of any garden in the county, 

 his peas and new potatoes the earliest and the 

 best. He had been schoolmaster for fifty years 

 when I first knew him about 1840 he lived on 

 into the fifties, and I believe kept the school on 

 to the end. He had educated children and 

 children's children to the second or third gen- 

 eration, and it is needless to say they were all 

 the best educated, could write the best hands, 



1 A local term for earliest. 



