He wishes me,
eight or nine weeks hence, to accompany him on foot to Quebec, and then
to Niagara and New York. I should like it well, if my circumstances and
other considerations would permit. What pleases much in Mons. S------ is
the simple and childlike enjoyment he finds in trifles, and the joy with
which he speaks of going back to his own country, away from the dull
Yankees, who here misunderstand and despise him. Yet I have never heard
him speak harshly of them. I rather think that B------ and I will be
remembered by him with more pleasure than anybody else in the country;
for we have sympathized with him, and treated him kindly, and like a
gentleman and an equal; and he comes to us at night as to home and
friends.
I went down to the river to-day to see B------ fish for salmon with a
fly,--a hopeless business; for he says that only one instance has been
known in the United States of salmon being taken otherwise than with a
net. A few chubs were all the fruit of his piscatory efforts. But while
looking at the rushing and rippling stream, I saw a great fish, some six
feet long and thick in proportion, suddenly emerge at whole length, turn
a somerset, and then vanish again beneath the water.
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