y shares in it, as he rises and dances about the
room. He has great variety of conversation, commensurate with his
experiences in life, and sometimes will talk Spanish, _ore
rotundo_,--sometimes imitate the Catholic priests, chanting Latin songs
for the dead, in deep, gruff, awful tones, producing really a very
strong impression,--then he will break out into a light, French song,
perhaps of love, perhaps of war, acting it out, as if on the stage of a
theatre: all this intermingled with continual fun, excited by the
incidents of the passing moment. He has Frenchified all our names,
calling B---- Monsieur Du Pont, myself M. de L'Aubepine, and himself M.
le Berger, and all, Knights of the Round-Table. And we live in great
harmony and brotherhood, as queer a life as anybody leads, and as queer
a set as may be found anywhere. In his more serious intervals, he talks
philosophy and deism, and preaches obedience to the law of reason and
morality; which law he says (and I believe him) he has so well observed,
that, notwithstanding his residence in dissolute countries, he has never
yet been sinful. 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. It was of a
glistening, yellowish brown, with its fins all spread, and looking very
strange and startling, darting out so lifelike from the black wate