stance. Amen! so be it! God bless you, dear.
I long to see you once more, and am ever affectionately yours,

F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, July 21st, 1839.

I was looking over a letter of yours, dear Harriet, just now, which
answered one of mine from Georgia, and find therein a perfect burst of
eloquence upon the subject of _fishing_. Now, though I know
destructiveness to be not only a _bump_, but a passion of yours, I
still should not have imagined that you could take delight in that
dreamy, lazy, lounging pursuit, if pursuit that may be called in which
one stands stock-still by the hour. As for me, the catching of fish was
always a subject of perfect ecstasy to me--so much so, indeed, that our
little company of piscators at Weybridge used to entreat me to "go
further off," or "get out of the boat," whenever I had a bite, because
my cries of joy were enough to scare all the fish in the river down to
Sheerness. It was the lingering, fidgeting, gasping, plunging agonies of
the poor creatures, after they were caught, which I objected to so
excessively, and which made me renounce the amusement in spite of my
passion for it. When I resumed it in Georgia, it was with the full
determination to find out some speedy mode of putting my finny captives
to death--as you are to understand that I have not the slightest
compunction about killing, though infinite about torturing,--so my
"slave," Jack, had orders to knock them on the head the instant he took
the hook from their gills; but he banged them horribly, till I longed to
bang him against the boat's side, and even cut their throats from ear to
ear, so that they looked like so many Banquos without the "gory locks";
and yet the indomitable life in the perverse creatures would make them
leap up with a galvanic spring and gasp, that invariably communicated an
electric shock to my nerves, and produced the fellow-spring and gasp
from me. This was the one drawback to my fishing felicity; oh! yes--I
forgot the worms or live bait, though! Harriet, it _is_ a hideous
diversion, and that is all that can be said for it; and I wonder at you
for indulging in it.

I tried paste, most exquisitely compounded of rice, flour, peach brandy,
and fine sugar; but the Altamaha fish were altogether too
unsophisticated for any such allurement; it would probably be safe to
put a _pate de foie gras_ or a p