In Which I Am a Caitiff

The situation seemed to me singular. Had the time been some centuries
earlier, the place somewhere in the old world, such speech might have
had better fitting. But the time was less than a year ago, the place
was in America. I was on my own lands, in this one of our middle
states. This was my own river; or at least, I owned the broad acres on
both sides of it for some miles. And I was a man of no slinking habit,
no repulsive mien, of that I was assured, but a successful American
of means; lately a professional man and now a man of leisure, and not
so far past thirty years of age. My fly-rod was the best that money
can buy, and the pages of the adjacent book were handsomely stocked by
the best makers of this country and each of the three divisions of
Great Britain; in each of which--as well as in Norway, Germany, or for
the matter of that, India, New Zealand, Alaska, Japan or other
lands--I had more than once wet a line. My garb was not of leather
jerkin, my buskins not of thonged straw, but on the contrary I was
turned out in good tweeds, well cut by my London tailor. To be called
offhand, and with no more reason than there was provocation, a
"caitiff," even by a voice somewhat treble and a trifle trembling,
left me every reason in the world to be surprised, annoyed and
grieved. For now Anopheles had flown away; and had I not been thus
startled, I should certainly have had him. Yet more, no fish would
rise in that pool the rest of that evening, for no trout in my little
stream thereabout ever had seen a boat or been frightened by the plash
of an oar since the time, three years back, when I had bought the
place.