HAMMERING

“Beside a meandering stream
There sat an old gentleman fat;
On the top of his head was his wig,
On the top of his wig was his hat.”

I once followed a venerable gentleman along the banks of a mill-stream, armed at all points with piscatorial paraphernalia, looking out for some appropriate spot, with all the coolness of a Spanish inquisitor, displaying his various instruments of refined torture.  He at last perched himself near the troubled waters, close to the huge revolving wheel, and threw in his float, which danced upon the mimic waves, and bobbed up and down, as if preparing for a reel.  Patiently he sat; as motionless and unfeeling as a block.  I placed myself under cover of an adjoining hedge, and watched him for the space of half an hour; but he pulled up nothing but his baited hook;—­what his bait was, I know not; but I suppose, from the vicinity, he was fishing for a “miller’s thumb.”  Presently, two mealy-mouthed men, from the mill, made their appearance, cautiously creeping behind him.

I drew myself up in the shadow of the luxuriant quickset to observe their notions.

A paling in the rear offered the rogues an effectual concealment in case the angler should turn.

Close to his seat ran some wood-work, upon which they quietly drew the broad tails of his coat, and driving in a couple of tenpenny nails, left the unconscious old gentleman a perfect fixture; to be taken at a valuation, I suppose, part of his personal property being already “brought to the hammer!” the clattering clamour of the wheel precluding him from hearing the careful, but no less effectual taps.  I certainly enjoyed the trick, and longed to see the ridiculous issue; but he was so intent upon his sport—­so fixed that he did not discover the nature of his real attachment while I remained.

Doubtless if he were of a quick and sudden temperament, a snatch of his humour rent his broad cloth, and he returned home with a woful tail, and slept not—­for his nap was irreparably destroyed!

I hate all twaddle; but when I see an old fool, with rod and line,

“Sitting like patience on a monument,”

and selling the remnant of his life below cost price in the pursuit of angling,—­that “art of ingeniously tormenting,”—­a feeling,

“More in sorrow than in anger,”

is excited at his profitless inhumanity.

Vainly do all the disciples of honest Izaak Walton discourse, in eulogistic strains, of the pleasure of the sport.  I can imagine neither pleasure nor sport derivable from the infliction of pain upon the meanest thing endowed with life.

This may be deemed Brahminical, but I doubt that man’s humanity who can indulge in the cruel recreation and murder while he smiles.