He completely personifies the public, and
considers it as an individual with whom he holds converse,--he being
as important on his side, as they on theirs.
An old man fishing on Long Wharf with a pole three or four feet
long--just long enough to clear the edge of the wharf. Patched
clothes, old, black coat--does not look as if he fished for what he
might catch, but as a pastime, yet quite poor and needy looking.
Fishing all the afternoon, and takes nothing but a plaice or two,
which get quite sun-dried. Sometimes he hauls up his line, with as
much briskness as he can, and finds a sculpin on the hook. The boys
come around him, and eye his motions, and make pitying or impertinent
remarks at his ill-luck--the old man answers not, but fishes on
imperturbably. Anon, he gathers up his clams or worms, and his one
sun-baked flounder--you think he is going home--but no, he is merely
going to another corner of the wharf, where he throws his line under a
vessel's counter, and fishes on with the same deathlike patience as
before. He seems not quiet so much as torpid,--not kindly nor unkindly
feeling--but not to have anything to do with the rest of the world. He
has no business, no amusement, but just to crawl to the end of Long
Wharf, and throw his line over. He has no sort of skill in fishing,
but a peculiar clumsiness.
Objects on a wharf--a huge pile of cotton bales, from a New Orleans
ship, twenty or thirty feet high, as high as a house. Barrels of
molasses, in regular ranges; casks of linseed oil.
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