The old man did not say much of his after life and the fruits of
this strange conversion, but his neighbors told us a great deal.
They spoke of his unselfishness, his charity, his kindly deeds;
told of his visiting the poor and unhappy, nursing the sick. They
said the little children loved him, and everyone in the village and
for miles around trusted and leaned upon Fishin' Jimmy. He taught
the boys to fish, sometimes the girls too; and while learning to
cast and strike, to whip the stream, they drank in knowledge of
higher things, and came to know and love Jimmy's "fishin'
r'liging." I remember they told me of a little French Canadian
girl, a poor, wretched waif, whose mother, an unknown tramp, had
fallen dead in the road near the village. The child, an untamed
little heathen, was found clinging to her mother's body in an agony
of grief and rage, and fought like a tiger when they tried to take
her away. A boy in the little group attracted to the spot, ran
away, with a child's faith in his old friend, to summon Fishin'
Jimmy. He came quickly, lifted the little savage tenderly, and
carried her away.

No one witnessed the taming process, but in a few days the pair
were seen together on the margin of Black Brook, each with a
fish-pole. Her dark face was bright with interest and excitement
as she took her first lesson in the art of angling. She jabbered
and chattered in her odd patois, he answered in broadest New
England dialect, but the two quite understood each other, and
though Jimmy said afterward that it was "dreffle to hear her call
the fish pois'n," they were soon great friends and comrades. For
weeks he kept and cared for the child, and when she left him for a
good home in Bethlehem, one would scarcely have recognized in the
gentle, affectionate girl the wild creature of the past. Though