He and the other boys were very fond of fishing, and spent many of their leisure hours on the margin of the mill-pond, catching flounders, perch, eels, and tomcod, which came up thither with the tide.

The place where they fished is now, probably, covered with stone pavements and brick buildings, and thronged with people and with vehicles of all kinds.

But at that period it was a marshy spot on the outskirts of the town, where gulls flitted and screamed overhead and salt-meadow grass grew under foot.
On the edge of the water there was a deep bed of clay, in which the boys were forced to stand while they caught their fish.

Here they dabbled in mud and mire like a flock of ducks.
"This is very uncomfortable," said Ben Franklin one day to his comrades, while they were standing mid-leg deep in the quagmire.
"So it is," said the other boys.

"What a pity we have no better place to stand!" If it mad not been for Ben, nothing more would have been done or said about, the matter.