THE PIKE FAMILY. 145 



boy always will on a frosty morning, whether he is cold or 

 not. As the day advances, he wiles the minnows with the 

 crumbs of corn bread, and the minnows attract the Jack- 

 fish. At last, after more or less sport, he strings his fish on 

 a dogwood switch, hands them to Caesar, goes home, takes a 

 honey dram, or, if he has taken the temperance pledge lately, 

 compromises on a mug of persimmon beer, which he calls 

 " 36.30," and sits down to breakfast ; and such a breakfast as 

 is seldom found outside of the Old Dominion. 



On such excursions, when I have been with "the Major," 

 minnows would be scarce, and the Jackfish would keep their 

 hiding-places ; then with my trolling-rod and gorge-hook, I 

 have forced from him acknowledgment of the superiority of 

 science over native aptness. But he always viewed trolling 

 in the light of some new-fangled "Northern heresy;" and 

 when I have attempted to drill him in my tactics, he would 

 make a few casts and return to his big cork lines ; and still 

 adheres to their use with as much pertinacity as he does to 

 the " political teachings of Thomas Jefferson," or the doctrine 

 of State Eights. 



I would not imply from the foregoing, that the anglers of 

 the Old Dominion are solitary or unsocial in their sports ; on 

 the contrary they are gregarious, and consequently convivial. 

 A fishing-party, if stationary, sometimes lasts all day, and is 

 apt to draw an occasional passer-by ; when a game of " seven- 

 up" or a tune on a fiddle is interluded. " The Major" says, a 

 cockfight sometimes varies the amusements of the day ; and 

 that he has even known a quarter race to come off in an 

 adjoining lane, by way of finale to the day's sport. 



[Since penning the foregoing sketch of an old friend, the 

 besom of war has swept over the broad fields along the upper 

 Rappahannock, where he lived ; crops have been destroyed, 

 10 



