BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 
241 
shelf.—Hark! I hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it 
some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the 
chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these 
woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain ? It comes on 
apace; my sumachs and sweet-briers tremble. — Eh, Mr. 
Poet, is it you ? How do you like the world to-day ? 
Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That’s the 
greatest thing I have seen to-day. There’s nothing like 
it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands,—un¬ 
less when we were off the coast of Spain. That’s a true 
Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to 
get, and have not eaten to-day, that I might go a-fish- 
ing. That’s the true industry for poets. It is the only 
trade I have learned. Come, let’s along. 
Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon 
be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just 
concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am 
near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. 
But that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging 
the bait meanwhile. Angle-worms are rarely to be met 
with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened 
with manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of 
digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the 
fish, when one’s appetite is not too keen; and this you 
may have all to yourself to-day. I would advise you to 
set in the spade down yonder among the ground-nuts, 
where you see the Johns wort waving. I think that I 
may warrant you one worm to every three sods you 
turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the 
grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go 
farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the in¬ 
crease of fair bait to be very nearly as the squares of 
the distances. 
16 
