4 SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



fisherman (of the worm and gentle species) never lived ; but 

 he aspired to higher things, and lived, I believe, to arrive 

 at the height of his ambition viz., the possession of a cottage 

 on the banks of a trout strem. 



My intimacy with this village Esculapius was much im- 

 peded by a female cousin of mine, who occupied the position 

 of Lady Bountiful at my father's house, and who physicked 

 the villagers con amore, in opposition to the doctor s paid 

 professional services. Each had the most supreme contempt 

 and dislike for the other. The latter, however, possessed a 

 far and wide reputation for his cures of dropsy in its worst 

 stage, by an old receipt that he had managed to obtain 

 (rather surreptitiously) from a farmer's wife in the neigh- 

 bourhood, and so celebrated had he become for this " spe- 

 cialite," that upon one occasion he was actually sent for into 



Oxfordshire, to attend the Countess of M for this 



disorder. The specific, however, unfortunately failed, but 

 the doctor consoled her friends and himself by the observa- 

 tion, " I can cure my Leddy of the dropsy, but I can't gie 

 her a new liver." 



My cousin used all the influence she could with my 

 father to break off my bands of intimacy with her adversary, 

 who sported a broad-brimmed hat (a la Abernethy), and 



laughed at Miss 's prescriptions and administrations; 



but our sympathies, or rather my own obstinate attachment, 

 were too strong to be disunited by the utmost efforts of our 

 opponent, and the first blush of daylight generally found me 

 at the doctor's door, where, after an early and simple break- 

 fast, prepared for us by Madame, sa femme, who did not at 

 all relish this unseasonable ejectment from the marriage- 

 couch, we sallied forth to some favourite spot on the river, 

 or the brook, and, as I was usually home by the breakfast- 

 hour, with a few fine fish, perch, pike, or bream, to display 

 to my father, who had been an ardent fisherman in his 



