Then she opened her batteries
upon an old weather-beaten Scotch lieutenant, called Lismahago,
who joined us at Durham, and is, I think, one of the most
singular personages I ever encountered -- His manner is as harsh as
his countenance; but his peculiar turn of thinking, and his pack
of knowledge made up of the remnants of rarities, rendered his
conversation desirable, in spite of his pedantry and ungracious
address. I have often met with a crab-apple in a hedge, which I
have been tempted to eat for its flavour, even while I was
disgusted by its austerity. The spirit of contradiction is
naturally so strong in Lismahago, that I believe in my conscience
he has rummaged, and read, and studied with indefatigable
attention, in order to qualify himself to refute established
maxims, and thus raise trophies for the gratification of
polemical pride. -- Such is the asperity of his self-conceit, that
he will not even acquiesce in a transient compliment made to his
own individual in particular, or to his country in general.
When I observed, that he must have read a vast number of books to
be able to discourse on such a variety of subjects, he declared
he had read little or nothing, and asked how he should find books
among the woods of America, where he had spent the greatest part
of his life.
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