Fisherman's Luck

Fisherman's Luck

by Henry van Dyke

AND SOME OTHER UNCERTAIN THINGS

"Now I conclude that not only in Physicke, but likewise in sundry

more certaine arts, fortune hath great share in them."

M. DE MONTAIGNE: Divers Events.

DEDICATION TO MY LADY GRAYGOWN

Here is the basket; I bring it home to you. There are no great fish

in it. But perhaps there may be one or two little ones which will

be to your taste. And there are a few shining pebbles from the bed

of the brook, and ferns from the cool, green woods, and wild flowers

from the places that you remember. I would fain console you, if I

could, for the hardship of having married an angler: a man who

relapses into his mania with the return of every spring, and never

sees a little river without wishing to fish in it. But after all,

we have had good times together as we have followed the stream of

life towards the sea. And we have passed through the dark days

without losing heart, because we were comrades. So let this book

tell you one thing that is certain. In all the life of your

fisherman the best piece of luck is just YOU.

CONTENTS

I. Fisherman's Luck

II. The Thrilling Moment

III. Talkability

IV. A Wild Strawberry

V. Lovers and Landscape

VI. A Fatal Success

VII. Fishing in Books

VIII. A Norwegian Honeymoon

IX. Who Owns the Mountains?

X. A Lazy, Idle Brook

XI. The Open Fire

XII. A Slumber Song

FISHERMAN'S LUCK

Has it ever fallen in your way to notice the quality of the

greetings that belong to certain occupations?

There is something about these salutations in kind which is

singularly taking and grateful to the ear. They are as much better

than an ordinary "good day" or a flat "how are you?" as a folk-song

of Scotland or the Tyrol is better than the futile love-ditty of the

drawing-room. They have a spicy and rememberable flavour. They

speak to the imagination and point the way to treasure-trove.

There is a touch of dignity in them, too, for all they are so free

and easy--the dignity of independence, the native spirit of one who

takes for granted that his mode of living has a right to make its

own forms of speech. I admire a man who does not hesitate to salute

the world in the dialect of his calling.

How salty and stimulating, for example, is the sailorman's hail of

"Ship ahoy!" It is like a breeze laden with briny odours and a

pleasant dash of spray. The miners in some parts of Germany have a

good greeting for their dusky trade. They cry to one who is going

down the shaft, "Gluck auf!" All the perils of an underground

adventure and all the joys of seeing the sun again are compressed

into a word. Even the trivial salutation which the telephone has

lately created and claimed for its peculiar use--"Hello, hello"--

seems to me to have a kind of fitness and fascination. It is like a

thoroughbred bulldog, ugly enough to be attractive. There is a

lively, concentrated, electric air about it. It makes courtesy wait

upon dispatch, and reminds us that we live in an age when it is

necessary to be wide awake.

I have often wished that every human employment might evolve its own

appropriate greeting. Some of them would be queer, no doubt; but at

least they would be an improvement on the wearisome iteration of

"Good-evening" and "Good-morning," and the monotonous inquiry, "How

do you do?"--a question so meaningless that it seldom tarries for an

answer. Under the new and more natural system of etiquette, when

you passed the time of day with a man you would know his business,

and the salutations of the market-place would be full of interest.

As for my chosen pursuit of angling (which I follow with diligence

when not interrupted by less important concerns), I rejoice with

every true fisherman that it has a greeting all its own and of a

most honourable antiquity. There is no written record of its

origin. But it is quite certain that since the days after the

Flood, when Deucalion

 "Did first this art invent

  Of angling, and his people taught the same,"

two honest and good-natured anglers have never met each other by the

way without crying out, "What luck?"

Here, indeed, is an epitome of the gentle art. Here is the spirit

of it embodied in a word and paying its respects to you with its

native accent. Here you see its secret charms unconsciously

disclosed. The attraction of angling for all the ages of man, from

the cradle to the grave, lies in its uncertainty. 'Tis an affair of

luck.

No amount of preparation in the matter of rods and lines and hooks

and lures and nets and creels can change its essential character.

No excellence of skill in casting the delusive fly or adjusting the

tempting bait upon the hook can make the result secure. You may

reduce the chances, but you cannot eliminate them. There are a

thousand points at which fortune may intervene. The state of the

weather, the height of the water, the appetite of the fish, the

presence or absence of other anglers--all these indeterminable

elements enter into the reckoning of your success. There is no

combination of stars in the firmament by which you can forecast the

piscatorial future. When you go a-fishing, you just take your

chances; you offer yourself as a candidate for anything that may be

going; you try your luck.

There are certain days that are favourites among anglers, who regard

them as propitious for the sport. I know a man who believes that

the fish always rise better on Sunday than on any other day in the

week. He complains bitterly of this supposed fact, because his

religious scruples will not allow him to take advantage of it. He

confesses that he has sometimes thought seriously of joining the

Seventh-Day Baptists.

Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, in the Alleghany Mountains, I have

found a curious tradition that Ascension Day is the luckiest in the

year for fishing. On that morning the district school is apt to he

thinly attended, and you must be on the stream very early if you do

not wish to find wet footprints on the stones ahead of you.

But in fact, all these superstitions about fortunate days are idle

and presumptuous. If there were such days in the calendar, a kind

and firm Providence would never permit the race of man to discover

them. It would rob life of one of its principal attractions, and

make fishing altogether too easy to be interesting.

Fisherman's luck is so notorious that it has passed into a proverb.

But the fault with that familiar saying is that it is too short and

too narrow to cover half the variations of the angler's possible

experience. For if his luck should be bad, there is no portion of

his anatomy, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet,

that may not be thoroughly wet. But if it should be good, he may

receive an unearned blessing of abundance not only in his basket,

but also in his head and his heart, his memory and his fancy. He

may come home from some obscure, ill-named, lovely stream--some Dry

Brook, or Southwest Branch of Smith's Run--with a creel full of

trout, and a mind full of grateful recollections of flowers that

seemed to bloom for his sake, and birds that sang a new, sweet,

friendly message to his tired soul. He may climb down to "Tommy's

Rock" below the cliffs at Newport (as I have done many a day with my

lady Greygown), and, all unnoticed by the idle, weary promenaders in

the path of fashion, haul in a basketful of blackfish, and at the

same time look out across the shining sapphire waters and inherit a

wondrous good fortune of dreams--

 "Have glimpses that will make him less forlorn;

  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

But all this, you must remember, depends upon something secret and

incalculable, something that we can neither command nor predict. It

is an affair of gift, not of wages. Fish (and the other good things

which are like sauce to the catching of them) cast no shadow before.

Water is the emblem of instability. No one can tell what he shall

draw out of it until he has taken in his line. Herein are found the

true charm and profit of angling for all persons of a pure and

childlike mind.

Look at those two venerable gentlemen floating in a skiff upon the

clear waters of Lake George. One of them is a successful statesman,

an ex-President of the United States, a lawyer versed in all the

curious eccentricities of the "lawless science of the law." The

other is a learned doctor of medicine, able to give a name to all

diseases from which men have imagined that they suffered, and to

invent new ones for those who are tired of vulgar maladies. But all

their learning is forgotten, their cares and controversies are laid

aside, in "innocuous desuetude." The Summer School of Sociology is

assembled. The Medical Congress is in session.

But they care not--no, not so much as the value of a single live

bait. The sun shines upon them with a fervent heat, but it irks

them not. The rain descends, and the winds blow and beat upon them,

but they are unmoved. They are securely anchored here in the lee of

Sabbath-Day Point.

What enchantment binds them to that inconsiderable spot? What magic

fixes their eyes upon the point of a fishing-rod, as if it were the

finger of destiny? It is the enchantment of uncertainty: the same

natural magic that draws the little suburban boys in the spring of

the year, with their strings and pin-hooks, around the shallow ponds

where dace and redfins hide; the same irresistible charm that fixes

a row of city gamins, like ragged and disreputable fish-crows, on

the end of a pier where blear-eyed flounders sometimes lurk in the

muddy water. Let the philosopher explain it as he will. Let the

moralist reprehend it as he chooses. There is nothing that attracts

human nature more powerfully than the sport of tempting the unknown

with a fishing-line.

Those ancient anglers have set out upon an exodus from the tedious

realm of the definite, the fixed, the must-certainly-come-to-pass.

They are on a holiday in the free country of peradventure. They do

not know at this moment whether the next turn of Fortune's reel will

bring up a perch or a pickerel, a sunfish or a black bass. It may

be a hideous catfish or a squirming eel, or it may be a lake-trout,

the grand prize in the Lake George lottery. There they sit, those

gray-haired lads, full of hope, yet equally prepared for

resignation; taking no thought for the morrow, and ready to make the

best of to-day; harmless and happy players at the best of all games

of chance.

"In other words," I hear some severe and sour-complexioned reader

say, "in plain language, they are a pair of old gamblers."

Yes, if it pleases you to call honest men by a bad name. But they

risk nothing that is not their own; and if they lose, they are not

impoverished. They desire nothing that belongs to other men; and if

they win, no one is robbed. If all gambling were like that, it

would be difficult to see the harm in it. Indeed, a daring moralist

might even assert, and prove by argument, that so innocent a delight

in the taking of chances is an aid to virtue.

Do you remember Martin Luther's reasoning on the subject of

"excellent large pike"? He maintains that God would never have

created them so good to the taste, if He had not meant them to be

eaten. And for the same reason I conclude that this world would

never have been left so full of uncertainties, nor human nature

framed so as to find a peculiar joy and exhilaration in meeting them

bravely and cheerfully, if it had not been divinely intended that

most of our amusement and much of our education should come from

this source.

"Chance" is a disreputable word, I know. It is supposed by many

pious persons to be improper and almost blasphemous to use it. But

I am not one of those who share this verbal prejudice. I am

inclined rather to believe that it is a good word to which a bad

reputation has been given. I feel grateful to that admirable

"psychologist who writes like a novelist," Mr. William James, for

his brilliant defence of it. For what does it mean, after all, but

that some things happen in a certain way which might have happened

in another way? Where is the immorality, the irreverence, the

atheism in such a supposition? Certainly God must be competent to

govern a world in which there are possibilities of various kinds,

just as well as one in which every event is inevitably determined

beforehand. St. Peter and the other fishermen-disciples on the Lake

of Galilee were perfectly free to cast their net on either side of

the ship. So far as they could see, so far as any one could see, it

was a matter of chance where they chose to cast it. But it was not

until they let it down, at the Master's word, on the right side that

they had good luck. And not the least element of their joy in the

draft of fishes was that it brought a change of fortune.

Leave the metaphysics of the question on the table for the present.

As a matter of fact, it is plain that our human nature is adapted to

conditions variable, undetermined, and hidden from our view. We are

not fitted to live in a world where a + b always equals c, and there

is nothing more to follow. The interest of life's equation arrives

with the appearance of x, the unknown quantity. A settled,

unchangeable, clearly foreseeable order of things does not suit our

constitution. It tends to melancholy and a fatty heart. Creatures

of habit we are undoubtedly; but it is one of our most fixed habits

to be fond of variety. The man who is never surprised does not know

the taste of happiness, and unless the unexpected sometimes happens

to us, we are most grievously disappointed.

Much of the tediousness of highly civilized life comes from its

smoothness and regularity. To-day is like yesterday, and we think

that we can predict to-morrow. Of course we cannot really do so.

The chances are still there. But we have covered them up so deeply

with the artificialities of life that we lose sight of them. It

seems as if everything in our neat little world were arranged, and

provided for, and reasonably sure to come to pass. The best way of

escape from this TAEDIUM VITAE is through a recreation like angling,

not only because it is so evidently a matter of luck, but also

because it tempts us into a wilder, freer life. It leads almost

inevitably to camping out, which is a wholesome and sanitary

imprudence.

It is curious and pleasant, to my apprehension, to observe how many

people in New England, one of whose States is called "the land of

Steady Habits," are sensible of the joy of changing them,--out of

doors. These good folk turn out from their comfortable farm-houses

and their snug suburban cottages to go a-gypsying for a fortnight

among the mountains or beside the sea. You see their white tents

gleaming from the pine-groves around the little lakes, and catch

glimpses of their bathing-clothes drying in the sun on the wiry

grass that fringes the sand-dunes. Happy fugitives from the bondage

of routine! They have found out that a long journey is not

necessary to a good vacation. You may reach the Forest of Arden in

a buckboard. The Fortunate Isles are within sailing distance in a

dory. And a voyage on the river Pactolus is open to any one who can

paddle a canoe.

I was talking--or rather listening--with a barber, the other day, in

the sleepy old town of Rivermouth. He told me, in one of those easy

confidences which seem to make the razor run more smoothly, that it

had been the custom of his family, for some twenty years past, to

forsake their commodious dwelling on Anchor Street every summer, and

emigrate six miles, in a wagon to Wallis Sands, where they spent the

month of August very merrily under canvas. Here was a sensible

household for you! They did not feel bound to waste a year's income

on a four weeks' holiday. They were not of those foolish folk who

run across the sea, carefully carrying with them the same tiresome

mind that worried them at home. They got a change of air by making

an alteration of life. They escaped from the land of Egypt by

stepping out into the wilderness and going a-fishing.

The people who always live in houses, and sleep on beds, and walk on

pavements, and buy their food from butchers and bakers and grocers,

are not the most blessed inhabitants of this wide and various earth.

The circumstances of their existence are too mathematical and secure

for perfect contentment. They live at second or third hand. They

are boarders in the world. Everything is done for them by somebody

else.

It is almost impossible for anything very interesting to happen to

them. They must get their excitement out of the newspapers, reading

of the hairbreadth escapes and moving accidents that befall people

in real life. What do these tame ducks really know of the adventure

of living? If the weather is bad, they are snugly housed. If it is

cold, there is a furnace in the cellar. If they are hungry, the

shops are near at hand. It is all as dull, flat, stale, and

unprofitable as adding up a column of figures. They might as well

be brought up in an incubator.

But when man abides in tents, after the manner of the early

patriarchs, the face of the world is renewed. The vagaries of the

clouds become significant. You watch the sky with a lover's look,

eager to know whether it will smile or frown. When you lie at night

upon your bed of boughs and hear the rain pattering on the canvas

close above your head, you wonder whether it is a long storm or only

a shower.

The rising wind shakes the tent-flaps. Are the pegs well driven

down and the cords firmly fastened? You fall asleep again and wake

later, to hear the rain drumming still more loudly on the tight

cloth, and the big breeze snoring through the forest, and the waves

plunging along the beach. A stormy day? Well, you must cut plenty

of wood and keep the camp-fire glowing, for it will be hard to start

it up again, if you let it get too low. There is little use in

fishing or hunting in such a storm. But there is plenty to do in

the camp: guns to be cleaned, tackle to be put in order, clothes to

be mended, a good story of adventure to be read, a belated letter to

be written to some poor wretch in a summer hotel, a game of hearts

or cribbage to be played, or a hunting-trip to be planned for the

return of fair weather. The tent is perfectly dry. A little trench

dug around it carries off the surplus water, and luckily it is

pitched with the side to the lake, so that you get the pleasant heat

of the fire without the unendurable smoke. Cooking in the rain has

its disadvantages. But how good the supper tastes when it is served

up on a tin plate, with an empty box for a table and a roll of

blankets at the foot of the bed for a seat!

A day, two days, three days, the storm may continue, according to

your luck. I have been out in the woods for a fortnight without a

drop of rain or a sign of dust. Again, I have tented on the shore

of a big lake for a week, waiting for an obstinate tempest to pass

by.

Look now, just at nightfall: is there not a little lifting and

breaking of the clouds in the west, a little shifting of the wind

toward a better quarter? You go to bed with cheerful hopes. A

dozen times in the darkness you are half awake, and listening

drowsily to the sounds of the storm. Are they waxing or waning? Is

that louder pattering a new burst of rain, or is it only the

plumping of the big drops as they are shaken from the trees? See,

the dawn has come, and the gray light glimmers through the canvas.

In a little while you will know your fate.

Look! There is a patch of bright yellow radiance on the peak of the

tent. The shadow of a leaf dances over it. The sun must be

shining. Good luck! and up with you, for it is a glorious morning.

The woods are glistening as fresh and fair as if they had been new-

created overnight. The water sparkles, and tiny waves are dancing

and splashing all along the shore. Scarlet berries of the mountain-

ash hang around the lake. A pair of kingfishers dart back and forth

across the bay, in flashes of living blue. A black eagle swings

silently around his circle, far up in the cloudless sky. The air is

full of pleasant sounds, but there is no noise. The world is full

of joyful life, but there is no crowd and no confusion. There is no

factory chimney to darken the day with its smoke, no trolley-car to

split the silence with its shriek and smite the indignant ear with

the clanging of its impudent bell. No lumberman's axe has robbed

the encircling forests of their glory of great trees. No fires have

swept over the hills and left behind them the desolation of a

bristly landscape. All is fresh and sweet, calm and clear and

bright.

'Twas rather a rude jest of Nature, that tempest of yesterday. But

if you have taken it in good part, you are all the more ready for

her caressing mood to-day. And now you must be off to get your

dinner--not to order it at a shop, but to look for it in the woods

and waters. You are ready to do your best with rod or gun. You

will use all the skill you have as hunter or fisherman. But what

you shall find, and whether you shall subsist on bacon and biscuit,

or feast on trout and partridges, is, after all, a matter of luck.

I profess that it appears to me not only pleasant, but also

salutary, to be in this condition. It brings us home to the plain

realities of life; it teaches us that a man ought to work before he

eats; it reminds us that, after he has done all he can, he must

still rely upon a mysterious bounty for his daily bread. It says to

us, in homely and familiar words, that life was meant to be

uncertain, that no man can tell what a day will bring forth, and

that it is the part of wisdom to be prepared for disappointments and

grateful for all kinds of small mercies.

There is a story in that fragrant book, THE LITTLE FLOWERS OF ST.

FRANCIS, which I wish to transcribe here, without tying a moral to

it, lest any one should accuse me of preaching.

"Hence [says the quaint old chronicler], having assigned to his

companions the other parts of the world, St. Francis, taking Brother

Maximus as his comrade, set forth toward the province of France.

And coming one day to a certain town, and being very hungry, they

begged their bread as they went, according to the rule of their

order, for the love of God. And St. Francis went through one

quarter of the town, and Brother Maximus through another. But

forasmuch as St. Francis was a man mean and low of stature, and

hence was reputed a vile beggar by such as knew him not, he only

received a few scanty crusts and mouthfuls of dry bread. But to

Brother Maximus, who was large and well favoured, were given good

pieces and big, and an abundance of bread, yea, whole loaves.

Having thus begged, they met together without the town to eat, at a

place where there was a clear spring and a fair large stone, upon

which each spread forth the gifts that he had received. And St.

Francis, seeing that the pieces of bread begged by Brother Maximus

were bigger and better than his own, rejoiced greatly, saying, 'Oh,

Brother Maximus, we are not worthy of so great a treasure.' As he

repeated these words many times, Brother Maximus made answer:

'Father, how can you talk of treasures when there is such great

poverty and such lack of all things needful? Here is neither napkin

nor knife, neither board nor trencher, neither house nor table,

neither man-servant nor maid-servant.' St. Francis replied: 'And

this is what I reckon a great treasure, where naught is made ready

by human industry, but all that is here is prepared by Divine

Providence, as is plainly set forth in the bread which we have

begged, in the table of fair stone, and in the spring of clear

water. And therefore I would that we should pray to God that He

teach us with all our hearts to love the treasure of holy poverty,

which is so noble a thing, and whose servant is God the Lord.'"

I know of but one fairer description of a repast in the open air;

and that is where we are told how certain poor fishermen, coming in

very weary after a night of toil (and one of them very wet after

swimming ashore), found their Master standing on the bank of the

lake waiting for them. But it seems that he must have been busy in

their behalf while he was waiting; for there was a bright fire of

coals burning on the shore, and a goodly fish broiling thereon, and

bread to eat with it. And when the Master had asked them about

their fishing, he said, "Come, now, and get your breakfast." So

they sat down around the fire, and with his own hands he served them

with the bread and the fish.

Of all the banquets that have ever been given upon earth, that is

the one in which I would rather have had a share.

But it is now time that we should return to our fishing. And let us

observe with gratitude that almost all of the pleasures that are

connected with this pursuit--its accompaniments and variations,

which run along with the tune and weave an embroidery of delight

around it--have an accidental and gratuitous quality about them.

They are not to be counted upon beforehand. They are like something

that is thrown into a purchase by a generous and open-handed dealer,

to make us pleased with our bargain and inclined to come back to the

same shop.

If I knew, for example, before setting out for a day on the brook,

precisely what birds I should see, and what pretty little scenes in

the drama of woodland life were to be enacted before my eyes, the

expedition would lose more than half its charm. But, in fact, it is

almost entirely a matter of luck, and that is why it never grows

tiresome.

The ornithologist knows pretty well where to look for the birds, and

he goes directly to the places where he can find them, and proceeds

to study them intelligently and systematically. But the angler who

idles down the stream takes them as they come, and all his

observations have a flavour of surprise in them.

He hears a familiar song,--one that he has often heard at a

distance, but never identified,--a loud, cheery, rustic cadence

sounding from a low pine-tree close beside him. He looks up

carefully through the needles and discovers a hooded warbler, a

tiny, restless creature, dressed in green and yellow, with two white

feathers in its tail, like the ends of a sash, and a glossy little

black bonnet drawn closely about its golden head. He will never

forget that song again. It will make the woods seem homelike to

him, many a time, as he hears it ringing through the afternoon, like

the call of a small country girl playing at hide-and-seek: "See ME;

here I BE."

Another day he sits down on a mossy log beside a cold, trickling

spring to eat his lunch. It has been a barren day for birds.

Perhaps he has fallen into the fault of pursuing his sport too

intensely, and tramped along the stream looking for nothing but

fish. Perhaps this part of the grove has really been deserted by

its feathered inhabitants, scared away by a prowling hawk or driven

out by nest-hunters. But now, without notice, the luck changes. A

surprise-party of redstarts breaks into full play around him. All

through the dark-green shadow of the hemlocks they flash like little

candles--CANDELITAS, the Cubans call them. Their brilliant markings

of orange and black, and their fluttering, airy, graceful movements,

make them most welcome visitors. There is no bird in the bush

easier to recognize or pleasanter to watch. They run along the

branches and dart and tumble through the air in fearless chase of

invisible flies and moths. All the time they keep unfolding and

furling their rounded tails, spreading them out and waving them and

closing them suddenly, just as the Cuban girls manage their fans.

In fact, the redstarts are the tiny fantail pigeons of the forest.

There are other things about the birds, besides their musical

talents and their good looks, that the fisherman has a chance to

observe on his lucky days. He may sea something of their courage

and their devotion to their young.

I suppose a bird is the bravest creature that lives, in spite of its

natural timidity. From which we may learn that true courage is not

incompatible with nervousness, and that heroism does not mean the

absence of fear, but the conquest of it. Who does not remember the

first time that he ever came upon a hen-partridge with her brood, as

he was strolling through the woods in June? How splendidly the old

bird forgets herself in her efforts to defend and hide her young!

Smaller birds are no less daring. One evening last summer I was

walking up the Ristigouche from Camp Harmony to fish for salmon at

Mowett's Rock, where my canoe was waiting for me. As I stepped out

from a thicket on to the shingly bank of the river, a spotted

sandpiper teetered along before me, followed by three young ones.

Frightened at first, the mother flew out a few feet over the water.

But the piperlings could not fly, having no feathers; and they crept

under a crooked log. I rolled the log over very gently and took one

of the cowering creatures into my hand--a tiny, palpitating scrap of

life, covered with soft gray down, and peeping shrilly, like a

Liliputian chicken. And now the mother was transformed. Her fear

was changed into fury. She was a bully, a fighter, an Amazon in

feathers. She flew at me with loud cries, dashing herself almost

into my face. I was a tyrant, a robber, a kidnapper, and she called

heaven to witness that she would never give up her offspring without

a struggle. Then she changed her tactics and appealed to my baser

passions. She fell to the ground and fluttered around me as if her

wing were broken. "Look!" she seemed to say, "I am bigger than that

poor little baby. If you must eat something, eat me! My wing is

lame. I can't fly. You can easily catch me. Let that little bird

go!" And so I did; and the whole family disappeared in the bushes

as if by magic. I wondered whether the mother was saying to

herself, after the manner of her sex, that men are stupid things,

after all, and no match for the cleverness of a female who stoops to

deception in a righteous cause.

Now, that trivial experience was what I call a piece of good luck--

for me, and, in the event, for the sandpiper. But it is doubtful

whether it would be quite so fresh and pleasant in the remembrance,

if it had not also fallen to my lot to take two uncommonly good

salmon on that same evening, in a dry season.

Never believe a fisherman when he tells you that he does not care

about the fish he catches. He may say that he angles only for the

pleasure of being out-of-doors, and that he is just as well

contented when he takes nothing as when he makes a good catch. He

may think so, but it is not true. He is not telling a deliberate

falsehood. He is only assuming an unconscious pose, and indulging

in a delicate bit of self-flattery. Even if it were true, it would

not be at all to his credit.

Watch him on that lucky day when he comes home with a full basket of

trout on his shoulder, or a quartette of silver salmon covered with

green branches in the bottom of the canoe. His face is broader than

it was when he went out, and there is a sparkle of triumph in his

eye. "It is naught, it is naught," he says, in modest depreciation

of his triumph. But you shall see that he lingers fondly about the

place where the fish are displayed upon the grass, and does not fail

to look carefully at the scales when they are weighed, and has an

attentive ear for the comments of admiring spectators. You shall

find, moreover, that he is not unwilling to narrate the story of the

capture--how the big fish rose short, four times, to four different

flies, and finally took a small Black Dose, and played all over the

pool, and ran down a terribly stiff rapid to the next pool below,

and sulked for twenty minutes, and had to be stirred up with stones,

and made such a long fight that, when he came in at last, the hold

of the hook was almost worn through, and it fell out of his mouth as

he touched the shore. Listen to this tale as it is told, with

endless variations, by every man who has brought home a fine fish,

and you will perceive that the fisherman does care for his luck,

after all.

And why not? I am no friend to the people who receive the bounties

of Providence without visible gratitude. When the sixpence falls

into your hat, you may laugh. When the messenger of an unexpected

blessing takes you by the hand and lifts you up and bids you walk,

you may leap and run and sing for joy, even as the lame man, whom

St. Peter healed, skipped piously and rejoiced aloud as he passed

through the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. There is no virtue in

solemn indifference. Joy is just as much a duty as beneficence is.

Thankfulness is the other side of mercy.

When you have good luck in anything, you ought to be glad. Indeed,

if you are not glad, you are not really lucky.

But boasting and self-glorification I would have excluded, and most

of all from the behaviour of the angler. He, more than other men,

is dependent for his success upon the favour of an unseen

benefactor. Let his skill and industry be never so great, he can do

nothing unless LA BONNE CHANCE comes to him.

I was once fishing on a fair little river, the P'tit Saguenay, with

two excellent anglers and pleasant companions, H. E. G---- and C. S.

D----. They had done all that was humanly possible to secure good

sport. The stream had been well preserved. They had boxes full of

beautiful flies, and casting-lines imported from England, and a rod

for every fish in the river. But the weather was "dour," and the

water "drumly," and every day the lumbermen sent a "drive" of ten

thousand spruce logs rushing down the flooded stream. For three

days we had not seen a salmon, and on the fourth, despairing, we

went down to angle for sea-trout in the tide of the greater

Saguenay. There, in the salt water, where men say the salmon never

take the fly, H. E. G----, fishing with a small trout-rod, a poor,

short line, and an ancient red ibis of the common kind, rose and

hooked a lordly salmon of at least five-and-thirty pounds. Was not

this pure luck?

Pride is surely the most unbecoming of all vices in a fisherman.

For though intelligence and practice and patience and genius, and

many other noble things which modesty forbids him to mention, enter

into his pastime, so that it is, as Izaak Walton has firmly

maintained, an art; yet, because fortune still plays a controlling

hand in the game, its net results should never be spoken of with a

haughty and vain spirit. Let not the angler imitate Timoleon, who

boasted of his luck and lost it. It is tempting Providence to print

the record of your wonderful catches in the sporting newspapers; or

at least, if it must be done, there should stand at the head of the

column some humble, thankful motto, like "NON NOBIS, DOMINE." Even

Father Izaak, when he has a fish on his line, says, with a due sense

of human limitations, "There is a trout now, and a good one too, IF

I CAN BUT HOLD HIM!"

This reminds me that we left H. E. G----, a few sentences back,

playing his unexpected salmon, on a trout-rod, in the Saguenay.

Four times that great fish leaped into the air; twice he suffered

the pliant reed to guide him toward the shore, and twice ran out

again to deeper water. Then his spirit awoke within him: he bent

the rod like a willow wand, dashed toward the middle of the river,

broke the line as if it had been pack-thread, and sailed

triumphantly away to join the white porpoises that were tumbling in

the tide. "WHE-E-EW," they said, "WHE-E-EW! PSHA-A-AW!" blowing out

their breath in long, soft sighs as they rolled about like huge

snowballs in the black water. But what did H. E. G---- say? He sat

him quietly down upon a rock and reeled in the remnant of his line,

uttering these remarkable and Christian words: "Those porpoises,

said he, "describe the situation rather mildly. But it was good fun

while it lasted."

Again I remembered a saying of Walton: "Well, Scholar, you must

endure worse luck sometimes, or you will never make a good angler."

Or a good man, either, I am sure. For he who knows only how to

enjoy, and not to endure, is ill-fitted to go down the stream of

life through such a world as this.

I would not have you to suppose, gentle reader, that in discoursing

of fisherman's luck I have in mind only those things which may be

taken with a hook. It is a parable of human experience. I have

been thinking, for instance, of Walton's life as well as of his

angling: of the losses and sufferings that he, the firm Royalist,

endured when the Commonwealth men came marching into London town; of

the consoling days that were granted to him, in troublous times, on

the banks of the Lea and the Dove and the New River, and the good

friends that he made there, with whom he took sweet counsel in

adversity; of the little children who played in his house for a few

years, and then were called away into the silent land where he could

hear their voices no longer. I was thinking how quietly and

peaceably he lived through it all, not complaining nor desponding,

but trying to do his work well, whether he was keeping a shop or

writing hooks, and seeking to prove himself an honest man and a

cheerful companion, and never scorning to take with a thankful heart

such small comforts and recreations as came to him.

It is a plain, homely, old-fashioned meditation, reader, but not

unprofitable. When I talk to you of fisherman's luck, I do not

forget that there are deeper things behind it. I remember that what

we call our fortunes, good or ill, are but the wise dealings and

distributions of a Wisdom higher, and a Kindness greater, than our

own. And I suppose that their meaning is that we should learn, by

all the uncertainties of our life, even the smallest, how to be

brave and steady and temperate and hopeful, whatever comes, because

we believe that behind it all there lies a purpose of good, and over

it all there watches a providence of blessing.

In the school of life many branches of knowledge are taught. But

the only philosophy that amounts to anything, after all, is just the

secret of making friends with our luck.

THE THRILLING MOMENT

"In angling, as in all other recreations into which excitement

enters, we have to be on our guard, so that we can at any moment

throw a weight of self-control into the scale against misfortune;

and happily we can study to some purpose, both to increase our

pleasure in success and to lessen our distress caused by what goes

ill. It is not only in cases of great disasters, however, that the

angler needs self-control. He is perpetually called upon to use it

to withstand small exasperations."--SIR EDWARD GREY: Fly-Fishing.

Every moment of life, I suppose, is more or less of a turning-point.

Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than

gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of chances, and if we

were always conscious of them they would worry us almost to death.

But happily our sense of uncertainty is soothed and cushioned by

habit, so that we can live comfortably with it. Only now and then,

by way of special excitement, it starts up wide awake. We perceive

how delicately our fortune is poised and balanced on the pivot of a

single incident. We get a peep at the oscillating needle, and,

because we have happened to see it tremble, we call our experience a

crisis.

The meditative angler is not exempt from these sensational periods.

There are times when all the uncertainty of his chosen pursuit seems

to condense itself into one big chance, and stand out before him

like a salmon on the top wave of a rapid. He sees that his luck

hangs by a single strand, and he cannot tell whether it will hold or

break. This is his thrilling moment, and he never forgets it.

Mine came to me in the autumn of 1894, on the banks of the

Unpronounceable River, in the Province of Quebec. It was the last

day, of the open season for ouananiche, and we had set our hearts on

catching some good fish to take home with us. We walked up from the

mouth of the river, four preposterously long and rough miles, to the

famous fishing-pool, "LA PLACE DE PECHE A BOIVIN." It was a noble

day for walking; the air was clear and crisp, and all the hills

around us were glowing with the crimson foliage of those little

bushes which God created to make burned lands look beautiful. The

trail ended in a precipitous gully, down which we scrambled with

high hopes, and fishing-rods unbroken, only to find that the river

was in a condition which made angling absurd if not impossible.

There must have been a cloud-burst among the mountains, for the

water was coming down in flood. The stream was bank-full, gurgling

and eddying out among the bushes, and rushing over the shoal where

the fish used to lie, in a brown torrent ten feet deep. Our last

day with the land-locked salmon seemed destined to be a failure, and

we must wait eight months before we could have another. There were

three of us in the disappointment, and we shared it according to our

temperaments.

Paul virtuously resolved not to give up while there was a chance

left, and wandered down-stream to look for an eddy where he might

pick up a small fish. Ferdinand, our guide, resigned himself

without a sigh to the consolation of eating blueberries, which he

always did with great cheerfulness. But I, being more cast down

than either of my comrades, sought out a convenient seat among the

rocks, and, adapting my anatomy as well as possible to the

irregularities of nature's upholstery, pulled from my pocket AN

AMATEUR ANGLER'S DAYS IN DOVE DALE, and settled down to read myself

into a Christian frame of mind.

Before beginning, my eyes roved sadly over the pool once more. It

was but a casual glance. It lasted only for an instant. But in

that fortunate fragment of time I distinctly saw the broad tail of a

big ouananiche rise and disappear in the swift water at the very

head of the pool.

Immediately the whole aspect of affairs was changed. Despondency

vanished, and the river glittered with the beams of rising hope.

Such is the absurd disposition of some anglers. They never see a

fish without believing that they can catch him; but if they see no

fish, they are inclined to think that the river is empty and the

world hollow.

I said nothing to my companions. It would have been unkind to

disturb them with expectations which might never be realized. My

immediate duty was to get within casting distance of that salmon as

soon as possible.

The way along the shore of the pool was difficult. The bank was

very steep, and the rocks by the river's edge were broken and

glibbery. Presently I came to a sheer wall of stone, perhaps thirty

feet high, rising directly from the deep water.

There was a tiny ledge or crevice running part of the way across the

face of this wall, and by this four-inch path I edged along, holding

my rod in one hand, and clinging affectionately with the other to

such clumps of grass and little bushes as I could find. There was

one small huckleberry plant to which I had a particular attachment.

It was fortunately a firm little bush, and as I held fast to it I

remembered Tennyson's poem which begins

"Flower in the crannied wall,"

and reflected that if I should succeed in plucking out this flower,

"root and all," it would probably result in an even greater increase

of knowledge than the poet contemplated.

The ledge in the rock now came to an end. But below me in the pool

there was a sunken reef; and on this reef a long log had caught,

with one end sticking out of the water, within jumping distance. It

was the only chance. To go back would have been dangerous. An

angler with a large family dependent upon him for support has no

right to incur unnecessary perils.

Besides, the fish was waiting for me at the upper end of the pool!

So I jumped; landed on the end of the log; felt it settle slowly

down; ran along it like a small boy on a seesaw, and leaped off into

shallow water just as the log rolled from the ledge and lunged out

into the stream.

It went wallowing through the pool and down the rapid like a playful

hippopotamus. I watched it with interest and congratulated myself

that I was no longer embarked upon it. On that craft a voyage down

the Unpronounceable River would have been short but far from merry.

The "all ashore" bell was not rung early enough. I just got off,

with not half a second to spare.

But now all was well, for I was within reach of the fish. A little

scrambling over the rocks brought me to a point where I could easily

cast over him. He was lying in a swift, smooth, narrow channel

between two large stones. It was a snug resting-place, and no doubt

he would remain there for some time. So I took out my fly-book and

prepared to angle for him according to the approved rules of the

art.

Nothing is more foolish in sport than the habit of precipitation.

And yet it is a fault to which I am singularly subject. As a boy,

in Brooklyn, I never came in sight of the Capitoline Skating Pond,

after a long ride in the horse-cars, without breaking into a run

along the board walk, buckling on my skates in a furious hurry, and

flinging myself impetuously upon the ice, as if I feared that it

would melt away before I could reach it. Now this, I confess, is a

grievous defect, which advancing years have not entirely cured; and

I found it necessary to take myself firmly, as it were, by the

mental coat-collar, and resolve not to spoil the chance of catching

the only ouananiche in the Unpronounceable River by undue haste in

fishing for him.

I carefully tested a brand-new leader, and attached it to the line

with great deliberation and the proper knot. Then I gave my whole

mind to the important question of a wise selection of flies.

It is astonishing how much time and mental anxiety a man can spend

on an apparently simple question like this. When you are buying

flies in a shop it seems as if you never had half enough. You keep

on picking out a half-dozen of each new variety as fast as the

enticing salesman shows them to you. You stroll through the streets

of Montreal or Quebec and drop in at every fishing-tackle dealer's

to see whether you can find a few more good flies. Then, when you

come to look over your collection at the critical moment on the bank

of a stream, it seems as if you had ten times too many. And, spite

of all, the precise fly that you need is not there.

You select a couple that you think fairly good, lay them down beside

you in the grass, and go on looking through the book for something

better. Failing to satisfy yourself, you turn to pick up those that

you have laid out, and find that they have mysteriously vanished

from the face of the earth.

Then you struggle with naughty words and relapse into a condition of

mental palsy.

Precipitation is a fault. But deliberation, for a person of

precipitate disposition, is a vice.

The best thing to do in such a case is to adopt some abstract theory

of action without delay, and put it into practice without

hesitation. Then if you fail, you can throw the responsibility on

the theory.

Now, in regard to flies there are two theories. The old,

conservative theory is, that on a bright day you should use a dark,

dull fly, because it is less conspicuous. So I followed that theory

first and put on a Great Dun and a Dark Montreal. I cast them

delicately over the fish, but he would not look at them.

Then I perverted myself to the new, radical theory which says that

on a bright day you must use a light, gay fly, because it is more in

harmony with the sky, and therefore less noticeable. Accordingly I

put on a Professor and a Parmacheene Belle; but this combination of

learning and beauty had no attraction for the ouananiche.

Then I fell back on a theory of my own, to the effect that the

ouananiche have an aversion to red, and prefer yellow and brown. So

I tried various combinations of flies in which these colours

predominated.

Then I abandoned all theories and went straight through my book,

trying something from every page, and winding up with that lure

which the guides consider infallible,--"a Jock o' Scott that cost

fifty cents at Quebec." But it was all in vain. I was ready to

despair.

At this psychological moment I heard behind me a voice of hope,--the

song of a grasshopper: not one of those fat-legged, green-winged

imbeciles that feebly tumble in the summer fields, but a game

grasshopper,--one of those thin-shanked, brown-winged fellows that

leap like kangaroos, and fly like birds, and sing KRI-KAREE-KAREE-

KRI in their flight.

It is not really a song, I know, but it sounds like one; and, if you

had heard that Kri-karee carolling as I chased him over the rocks,

you would have been sure that he was mocking me.

I believed that he was the predestined lure for that ouananiche; but

it was hard to persuade him to fulfill his destiny. I slapped at

him with my hat, but he was not there. I grasped at him on the

bushes, and brought away "nothing but leaves." At last he made his

way to the very edge of the water and poised himself on a stone,

with his legs well tucked in for a long leap and a bold flight to

the other side of the river. It was my final opportunity. I made a

desperate grab at it and caught the grasshopper.

My premonition proved to be correct. When that Kri-karee, invisibly

attached to my line, went floating down the stream, the ouananiche

was surprised. It was the fourteenth of September, and he had

supposed the grasshopper season was over. The unexpected temptation

was too strong for him. He rose with a rush, and in an instant I

was fast to the best land-locked salmon of the year.

But the situation was not without its embarrassments. My rod

weighed only four and a quarter ounces; the fish weighed between six

and seven pounds. The water was furious and headstrong. I had only

thirty yards of line and no landing-net.

"HOLA! FERDINAND!" I cried. "APPORTE LA NETTE, VITE! A BEAUTY!

HURRY UP!"

I thought it must be an hour while he was making his way over the

hill, through the underbrush, around the cliff. Again and again the

fish ran out my line almost to the last turn. A dozen times he

leaped from the water, shaking his silvery sides. Twice he tried to

cut the leader across a sunken ledge. But at last he was played

out, and came in quietly towards the point of the rock. At the same

moment Ferdinand appeared with the net.

Now, the use of the net is really the most difficult part of

angling. And Ferdinand is the best netsman in the Lake St. John

country. He never makes the mistake of trying to scoop a fish in

motion. He does not grope around with aimless, futile strokes as if

he were feeling for something in the dark. He does not entangle the

dropper-fly in the net and tear the tail-fly out of the fish's

mouth. He does not get excited.

He quietly sinks the net in the water, and waits until he can see

the fish distinctly, lying perfectly still and within reach. Then

he makes a swift movement, like that of a mower swinging the scythe,

takes the fish into the net head-first, and lands him without a

slip.

I felt sure that Ferdinand was going to do the trick in precisely

this way with my ouananiche. Just at the right instant he made one

quick, steady swing of the arms, and--the head of the net broke

clean off the handle and went floating away with the fish in it!

All seemed to be lost. But Ferdinand was equal to the occasion. He

seized a long, crooked stick that lay in a pile of driftwood on the

shore, sprang into the water up to his waist, caught the net as it

drifted past, and dragged it to land, with the ultimate ouananiche,

the prize of the season, still glittering through its meshes.

This is the story of my most thrilling moment as an angler.

But which was the moment of the deepest thrill?

Was it when the huckleberry bush saved me from a watery grave, or

when the log rolled under my feet and started down the river? Was

it when the fish rose, or when the net broke, or when the long stick

captured it?

No, it was none of these. It was when the Kri-karee sat with his

legs tucked under him on the brink of the stream. That was the

turning-point. The fortunes of the day depended on the comparative

quickness of the reflex action of his neural ganglia and mine. That

was the thrilling moment.

I see it now. A crisis is really the commonest thing in the world.

The reason why life sometimes seems dull to us is because we do not

perceive the importance and the excitement of getting bait.

TALKABILITY

A PRELUDE AND THEME WITH VARIATIONS

"He praises a meditative life, and with evident sincerity: but we

feel that he liked nothing so well as good talk."--JAMES RUSSELL

LOWELL: Walton.

I

PRELUDE--ON AN OLD, FOOLISH MAXIM

The inventor of the familiar maxim that "fishermen must not talk" is

lost in the mists of antiquity, and well deserves his fate. For a

more foolish rule, a conventionality more obscure and aimless in its

tyranny, was never imposed upon an innocent and honourable

occupation, to diminish its pleasure and discount its profits. Why,

in the name of all that is genial, should anglers go about their

harmless sport in stealthy silence like conspirators, or sit

together in a boat, dumb, glum, and penitential, like naughty

schoolboys on the bench of disgrace? 'Tis an Omorcan superstition;

a rule without a reason; a venerable, idiotic fashion invented to

repress lively spirits and put a premium on stupidity.

For my part, I incline rather to the opinion of the Neapolitan

fishermen who maintain that a certain amount of noise, of certain

kinds, is likely to improve the fishing, and who have a particular

song, very sweet and charming, which they sing to draw the fishes

around them. It is narrated, likewise, of the good St. Brandan,

that on his notable voyage from Ireland in search of Paradise, he

chanted the service for St. Peter's day so pleasantly that a

subaqueous audience of all sorts and sizes was attracted, insomuch

that the other monks began to be afraid, and begged the abbot that

he would sing a little lower, for they were not quite sure of the

intention of the congregation. Of St. Anthony of Padua it is said

that he even succeeded in persuading the fishes, in great

multitudes, to listen to a sermon; and that when it was ended (it

must be noted that it was both short and cheerful) they bowed their

heads and moved their bodies up and down with every mark of fondness

and approval of what the holy father had spoken.

If we can believe this, surely we need not be incredulous of things

which seem to be no less, but rather more, in harmony with the

course of nature. Creatures who are sensible to the attractions of

a sermon can hardly be indifferent to the charm of other kinds of

discourse. I can easily imagine a company of grayling wishing to

overhear a conversation between I. W. and his affectionate (but

somewhat prodigal) son and servant, Charles Cotton; and surely every

intelligent salmon in Scotland might have been glad to hear

Christopher North and the Ettrick Shepherd bandy jests and swap

stories. As for trout,--was there one in Massachusetts that would

not have been curious to listen to the intimate opinions of Daniel

Webster as he loafed along the banks of the Marshpee,--or is there

one in Pennsylvania to-day that might not be drawn with interest and

delight to the feet of Joseph Jefferson, telling how he conceived

and wrote RIP VAN WINKLE on the banks of a trout-stream?

Fishermen must be silent? On the contrary, it is far more likely

that good talk may promote good fishing.

All this, however, goes upon the assumption that fish can hear, in

the proper sense of the word. And this, it must be confessed, is an

assumption not yet fully verified. Experienced anglers and students

of fishy ways are divided upon the question. It is beyond a doubt

that all fishes, except the very lowest forms, have ears. But then

so have all men; and yet we have the best authority for believing

that there are many who "having ears, hear not."

The ears of fishes, for the most part, are inclosed in their skull,

and have no outward opening. Water conveys sound, as every country

boy knows who has tried the experiment of diving to the bottom of

the swimming-hole and knocking two big stones together. But I doubt

whether any country boy, engaged in this interesting scientific

experiment, has heard the conversation of his friends on the bank

who were engaged in hiding his clothes.

There are many curious and more or less venerable stories to the

effect that fishes may be trained to assemble at the ringing of a

bell or the beating of a drum. Lucian, a writer of the second

century, tells of a certain lake wherein many sacred fishes were

kept, of which the largest had names given to them, and came when

they were called. But Lucian was not a man of especially good

reputation, and there is an air of improbability about his statement

that the LARGEST fishes came. This is not the custom of the largest

fishes.

In the present century there was a tale of an eel in a garden-well,

in Scotland, which would come to be fed out of a spoon when the

children called him by his singularly inappropriate name of Rob Roy.

This seems a more likely story than Lucian's; at all events it comes

from a more orthodox atmosphere. But before giving it full

credence, I should like to know whether the children, when they

called "Rob Roy!" stood where the eel could see the spoon.

On the other side of the question, we may quote Mr. Ronalds, also a

Scotchman, and the learned author of THE FLY-FISHER'S ENTOMOLOGY,

who conducted a series of experiments which proved that even trout,

the most fugacious of fish, are not in the least disturbed by the

discharge of a gun, provided the flash is concealed. Mr. Henry P.

Wells, the author of THE AMERICAN SALMON ANGLER, says that he has

"never been able to make a sound in the air which seemed to produce

the slightest effect upon trout in the water."

So the controversy on the hearing of fishes continues, and the

conclusion remains open. Every man is at liberty to embrace that

side which pleases him best. You may think that the finny tribes

are as sensitive to sound as Fine Ear, in the German fairy-tale, who

could hear the grass grow. Or you may hold the opposite opinion,

that they are

 "Deafer than the blue-eyed cat."

But whichever theory you adopt, in practice, if you are a wise

fisherman, you will steer a middle course, between one thing which

must be left undone and another thing which should be done. You

will refrain from stamping on the bank, or knocking on the side of

the boat, or dragging the anchor among the stones on the bottom; for

when the water vibrates the fish are likely to vanish. But you will

indulge as freely as you please in pleasant discourse with your

comrade; for it is certain that fishing is never hindered, and may

even be helped, in one way or another, by good talk.

I should therefore have no hesitation in advising any one to choose,

for companionship on an angling expedition, long or short, a person

who has the rare merit of being TALKABLE.

II

THEME--ON A SMALL, USEFUL VIRTUE

"Talkable" is not a new adjective. But it needs a new definition,

and the complement of a corresponding noun. I would fain set down

on paper some observations and reflections which may serve to make

its meaning clear, and render due praise to that most excellent

quality in man or woman,--especially in anglers,--the small but

useful virtue of TALKABILITY.

Robert Louis Stevenson uses the word "talkable" in one of his essays

to denote a certain distinction among the possible subjects of human

speech. There are some things, he says in effect, about which you

can really talk; and there are other things about which you cannot

properly talk at all, but only dispute, or harangue, or prose, or

moralize, or chatter.

After mature consideration I have arrived at the opinion that this

distinction among the themes of speech is an illusion. It does not

exist. All subjects, "the foolish things of the world, and the weak

things of the world, and base things of the world, yea, and things

that are not," may provide matter for good talk, if only the right

people are engaged in the enterprise. I know a man who can make a

description of the weather as entertaining as a tune on the violin;

and even on the threadbare theme of the waywardness of domestic

servants, I have heard a discreet woman play the most diverting and

instructive variations.

No, the quality of talkability does not mark a distinction among

things; it denotes a difference among people. It is not an

attribute unequally distributed among material objects and abstract

ideas. It is a virtue which belongs to the mind and moral character

of certain persons. It is a reciprocal human quality; active as

well as passive; a power of bestowing and receiving.

An amiable person is one who has a capacity for loving and being

loved. An affable person is one who is ready to speak and to be

spoken to,--as, for example, Milton's "affable archangel" Raphael;

though it must be confessed that he laid the chief emphasis on the

active side of his affability. A "clubable" person (to use a word

which Dr. Samuel Johnson invented but did not put into his

dictionary) is one who is fit for the familiar give and take of

club-life. A talkable person, therefore, is one whose nature and

disposition invite the easy interchange of thoughts and feelings,

one in whose company it is a pleasure to talk or to be talked to.

Now this good quality of talkability is to be distinguished, very

strictly and inflexibly, from the bad quality which imitates it and

often brings it into discredit. I mean the vice of talkativeness.

That is a selfish, one-sided, inharmonious affair, full of

discomfort, and productive of most unchristian feelings.

You may observe the operations of this vice not only in human

beings, but also in birds. All the birds in the bush can make some

kind of a noise; and most of them like to do it; and some of them

like it a great deal and do it very much. But it is not always for

edification, nor are the most vociferous and garrulous birds

commonly the most pleasing. A parrot, for instance, in your

neighbour's back yard, in the summer time, when the windows are

open, is not an aid to the development of Christian character. I

knew a man who had to stay in the city all summer, and in the autumn

was asked to describe the character and social standing of a new

family that had moved into his neighbourhood. Were they "nice

people," well-bred, intelligent, respectable? "Well," said he, "I

don't know what your standards are, and would prefer not to say

anything libellous; but I'll tell you in a word,--they are the kind

of people that keep a parrot."

Then there is the English Sparrow! What an insufferable chatterbox,

what an incurable scold, what a voluble and tiresome blackguard is

this little feathered cockney. There is not a sweet or pleasant

word in all his vocabulary.

I am convinced that he talks altogether of scandals and fights and

street-sweepings.

The kingdom of ornithology is divided into two departments,--real

birds and English sparrows. English sparrows are not real birds;

they are little beasts.

There was a church in Brooklyn which was once covered with a great

and spreading vine, in which the sparrows built innumerable nests.

These ungodly little birds kept up such a din that it was impossible

to hear the service of the sanctuary. The faithful clergy strained

their voices to the verge of ministerial sore throat, but the people

had no peace in their devotions until the vine was cut down, and the

Anglican intruders were evicted.

A talkative person is like an English sparrow,--a bird that cannot

sing, and will sing, and ought to be persuaded not to try to sing.

But a talkable person has the gift that belongs to the wood thrush

and the veery and the wren, the oriole and the white-throat and the

rose-breasted grosbeak, the mockingbird and the robin (sometimes);

and the brown thrush; yes, the brown thrush has it to perfection, if

you can catch him alone,--the gift of being interesting, charming,

delightful, in the most off-hand and various modes of utterance.

Talkability is not at all the same thing as eloquence. The eloquent

man surprises, overwhelms, and sometimes paralyzes us by the display

of his power. Great orators are seldom good talkers. Oratory in

exercise is masterful and jealous, and intolerant of all

interruptions. Oratory in preparation is silent, self-centred,

uncommunicative. The painful truth of this remark may he seen in

the row of countenances along the president's table at a public

banquet about nine o'clock in the evening. The bicycle-face seems

unconstrained and merry by comparison with the after-dinner-speech-

face. The flow of table-talk is corked by the anxious conception of

post-prandial oratory.

Thackeray, in one of his ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, speaks of "the sin of

tall-talking," which, he says, "is the sin of schoolmasters,

governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or old

people." But this is not in accord with my observation. I should

say it was rather the sin of dilettanti who are ambitious of that

high-stepping accomplishment which is called "conversational

ability."

This has usually, to my mind, something set and artificial about it,

although in its most perfect form the art almost succeeds in

concealing itself. But, at all events, ''conversation'' is talk in

evening dress, with perhaps a little powder and a touch of rouge.

'T is like one of those wise virgins who are said to look their best

by lamplight. And doubtless this is an excellent thing, and not

without its advantages. But for my part, commend me to one who

loses nothing by the early morning illumination,--one who brings all

her attractions with her when she comes down to breakfast,--she is a

very pleasant maid.

Talk is that form of human speech which is exempt from all duties,

foreign and domestic. It is the nearest thing in the world to

thinking and feeling aloud. It is necessarily not for publication,--

solely an evidence of good faith and mutual kindness. You tell me

what you have seen and what you are thinking about, because you take

it for granted that it will interest and entertain me; and you

listen to my replies and the recital of my adventures and opinions,

because you know I like to tell them, and because you find something

in them, of one kind or another, that you care to hear. It is a

nice game, with easy, simple rules, and endless possibilities of

variation. And if we go into it with the right spirit, and play it

for love, without heavy stakes, the chances are that if we happen to

be fairly talkable people we shall have one of the best things in

the world,--a mighty good talk.

What is there in this anxious, hide-bound, tiresome existence of

ours, more restful and remunerative? Montaigne says, "The use of it

is more sweet than of any other action of life; and for that reason

it is that, if I were compelled to choose, I should sooner, I think,

consent to lose my sight than my hearing and speech." The very

aimlessness with which it proceeds, the serene disregard of all

considerations of profit and propriety with which it follows its

wandering course, and brings up anywhere or nowhere, to camp for the

night, is one of its attractions. It is like a day's fishing, not

valuable chiefly for the fish you bring home, but for the pleasant

country through which it leads you, and the state of personal well-

being and health in which it leaves you, warmed, and cheered, and

content with life and friendship.

The order in which you set out upon a talk, the path which you

pursue, the rules which you observe or disregard, make but little

difference in the end. You may follow the advice of Immanuel Kant

if you like, and begin with the weather and the roads, and go on to

current events, and wind up with history, art, and philosophy. Or

you may reverse the order if you prefer, like that admirable talker

Clarence King, who usually set sail on some highly abstract paradox,

such as "Civilization is a nervous disease," and landed in a tale of

adventure in Mexico or the Rocky Mountains. Or you may follow the

example of Edward Eggleston, who started in at the middle and worked

out at either end, and sometimes at both. It makes no difference.

If the thing is in you at all, you will find good matter for talk

anywhere along the route. Hear what Montaigne says again: "In our

discourse all subjects are alike to me; let there be neither weight

nor depth, 't is all one; there is yet grace and pertinence; all

there is tented with a mature and constant judgment, and mixed with

goodness, freedom, gayety, and friendship."

How close to the mark the old essayist sends his arrow! He is right

about the essential qualities of good talk. They are not merely

intellectual. They are moral. Goodness of heart, freedom of

spirit, gayety of temper, and friendliness of disposition,--these

are four fine things, and doubtless as acceptable to God as they are

agreeable to men. The talkability which springs out of these

qualities has its roots in a good soil. On such a plant one need

not look for the poison berries of malign discourse, nor for the

Dead Sea apples of frivolous mockery. But fair fruit will be there,

pleasant to the sight and good for food, brought forth abundantly

according to the season.

III

VARIATIONS--ON A PLEASANT PHRASE FROM MONTAIGNE

Montaigne has given as our text, "Goodness, freedom, gayety, and

friendship,"--these are the conditions which produce talkability.

And on this fourfold theme we may embroider a few variations, by way

of exposition and enlargement.

GOODNESS is the first thing and the most needful. An ugly, envious,

irritable disposition is not fitted for talk. The occasions for

offence are too numerous, and the way into strife is too short and

easy. A touch of good-natured combativeness, a fondness for brisk

argument, a readiness to try a friendly bout with any comer, on any

ground, is a decided advantage in a talker. It breaks up the

offensive monotony of polite concurrence, and makes things lively.

But quarrelsomeness is quite another affair, and very fatal.

I am always a little uneasy in a discourse with the Reverend

Bellicosus Macduff. It is like playing golf on links liable to

earthquakes. One never knows when the landscape will be thrown into

convulsions. Macduff has a tendency to regard a difference of

opinion as a personal insult. If he makes a bad stroke he seems to

think that the way to retrieve it is to deliver the next one on the

head of the other player. He does not tarry for the invitation to

lay on; and before you know what has happened you find yourself in a

position where you are obliged to cry, "Hold, enough!" and to be

liberally damned without any bargain to that effect. This is

discouraging, and calculated to make one wish that human intercourse

might be put, as far as Macduff is concerned, upon the gold basis of

silence.

On the other hand, what a delight it was to talk with that old

worthy, Chancellor Howard Crosby. He was a fighting man for four or

five generations hack, Dutch on one side, English on the other. But

there was not one little drop of gall in his blood. His opinions

were fixed to a degree; he loved to do battle for them; he never

changed them--at least never in the course of the same discussion.

He admired and respected a gallant adversary, and urged him on, with

quips and puns and daring assaults and unqualified statements, to do

his best. Easy victories were not to his taste. Even if he joined

with you in laying out some common falsehood for burial, you might

be sure that before the affair was concluded there would be every

prospect of what an Irishman would call "an elegant wake." If you

stood up against him on one of his favorite subjects of discussion

you must be prepared for hot work. You would have to take off your

coat. But when the combat was over he would be the man to help you

on with it again; and you would walk home together arm in arm,

through the twilight, smoking the pipe of peace. Talk like that

does good. It quickens the beating of the heart, and leaves no

scars upon it.

But this manly spirit, which loves

 "To drink delight of battle with its peers,"

is a very different thing from that mean, bad, hostile temper which

loves to inflict wounds and injuries just for the sake of showing

power, and which is never so happy as when it is making some one

wince. There are such people in the world, and sometimes their

brilliancy tempts us to forget their malignancy. But to have much

converse with them is as if we should make playmates of rattlesnakes

for their grace of movement and swiftness of stroke.

I knew a man once (I will not name him even with an initial) who was

malignant to the core. Learned, industrious, accomplished, he kept

all his talents at the service of a perfect genius for hatred. If

you crossed his path but once, he would never cease to curse you.

The grave might close over you, but he would revile your epitaph and

mock at your memory. It was not even necessary that you should do

anything to incur his enmity. It was enough to be upright and

sincere and successful, to waken the wrath of this Shimei.

Integrity was an offence to him, and excellence of any kind filled

him with spleen. There was no good cause within his horizon that he

did not give a bad word to, and no decent man in the community whom

he did not try either to use or to abuse. To listen to him or to

read what he had written was to learn to think a little worse of

every one that he mentioned, and worst of all of him. He had the

air of a gentleman, the vocabulary of a scholar, the style of a

Junius, and the heart of a Thersites.

Talk, in such company, is impossible. The sense of something evil,

lurking beneath the play of wit, is like the knowledge that there

are snakes in the grass. Every step must be taken with fear. But

the real pleasure of a walk through the meadow comes from the

feeling of security, of ease, of safe and happy abandon to the mood

of the moment. This ungirdled and unguarded felicity in mutual

discourse depends, after all, upon the assurance of real goodness in

your companion. I do not mean a stiff impeccability of conduct.

Prudes and Pharisees are poor comrades. I mean simply goodness of

heart, the wholesome, generous, kindly quality which thinketh no

evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, hopeth all things, endureth all

things, and wisheth well to all men. Where you feel this quality

you can let yourself go, in the ease of hearty talk.

FREEDOM is the second note that Montaigne strikes, and it is

essential to the harmony of talking. Very careful, prudent, precise

persons are seldom entertaining in familiar speech. They are like

tennis players in too fine clothes. They think more of their

costume than of the game.

A mania for absolutely correct pronunciation is fatal. The people

who are afflicted with this painful ailment are as anxious about

their utterance as dyspeptics about their diet. They move through

their sentences as delicately as Agag walked. Their little airs of

nicety, their starched cadences and frilled phrases seem as if they

had just been taken out of a literary bandbox. If perchance you

happen to misplace an accent, you shall see their eyebrows curl up

like an interrogation mark, and they will ask you what authority you

have for that pronunciation. As if, forsooth, a man could not talk

without book-license! As if he must have a permit from some dusty

lexicon before he can take a good word into his mouth and speak it

out like the people with whom he has lived!

The truth is that the man who is very particular not to commit

himself, in pronunciation or otherwise, and talks as if his remarks

were being taken down in shorthand, and shudders at the thought of

making a mistake, will hardly be able to open your heart or let out

the best that is in his own.

Reserve and precision are a great protection to overrated

reputations; but they are death to talk.

In talk it is not correctness of grammar nor elegance of enunciation

that charms us; it is spirit, VERVE, the sudden turn of humour, the

keen, pungent taste of life. For this reason a touch of dialect, a

flavour of brogue, is delightful. Any dialect is classic that has

conveyed beautiful thoughts. Who that ever talked with the poet

Tennyson, when he let himself go, over the pipes, would miss the

savour of his broad-rolling Lincolnshire vowels, now heightening the

humour, now deepening the pathos, of his genuine manly speech?

There are many good stories lingering in the memories of those who

knew Dr. James McCosh, the late president of Princeton University,--

stories too good, I fear, to get into a biography; but the best of

them, in print, would not have the snap and vigour of the poorest of

them, in talk, with his own inimitable Scotch-Irish brogue to set it

forth.

A brogue is not a fault. It is a beauty, an heirloom, a

distinction. A local accent is like a landed inheritance; it marks

a man's place in the world, tells where he comes from. Of course it

is possible to have too much of it. A man does not need to carry

the soil of his whole farm around with him on his boots. But,

within limits, the accent of a native region is delightful. 'T is

the flavour of heather in the grouse, the taste of wild herbs and

evergreen-buds in the venison. I like the maple-sugar tang of the

Vermonter's sharp-edged speech; the round, full-waisted r's of

Pennsylvania and Ohio; the soft, indolent vowels of the South. One

of the best talkers now living is a schoolmaster from Virginia,

Colonel Gordon McCabe. I once crossed the ocean with him on a

stream of stories that reached from Liverpool to New York. He did

not talk in the least like a book. He talked like a Virginian.

When Montaigne mentions GAYETY as the third clement of satisfying

discourse, I fancy he does not mean mere fun, though that has its

value at the right time and place. But there is another quality

which is far more valuable and always fit. Indeed it underlies the

best fun and makes it wholesome. It is cheerfulness, the temper

which makes the best of things and squeezes the little drops of

honey even out of thistle-blossoms. I think this is what Montaigne

meant. Certainly it is what he had.

Cheerfulness is the background of all good talk. A sense of humour

is a means of grace. With it I have heard a pleasant soul make even

that most perilous of all subjects, the description of a long

illness, entertaining. The various physicians moved through the

recital as excellent comedians, and the medicines appeared like a

succession of timely jests.

There is no occasion upon which this precious element of talkability

comes out stronger than when we are on a journey. Travel with a

cheerless and easily discouraged companion is an unadulterated

misery. But a cheerful comrade is better than a waterproof coat and

a foot-warmer.

I remember riding once with my lady Graygown fifteen miles through a

cold rainstorm, in an open buckboard, over the worst road in the

world, from LAC A LA BELLE RIVIERE to the Metabetchouan River. Such

was the cheerfulness of her ejaculations (the only possible form of

talk) that we arrived at our destination as warm and merry as if we

had been sitting beside a roaring camp-fire.

But after all, the very best thing in good talk, and the thing that

helps it most, is FRIENDSHIP. How it dissolves the barriers that

divide us, and loosens all constraint, and diffuses itself like some

fine old cordial through all the veins of life--this feeling that we

understand and trust each other, and wish each other heartily well!

Everything into which it really comes is good. It transforms

letter-writing from a task into a pleasure. It makes music a

thousand times more sweet. The people who play and sing not at us,

but TO us,--how delightful it is to listen to them! Yes, there is a

talkability that can express itself even without words. There is an

exchange of thought and feeling which is happy alike in speech and

in silence. It is quietness pervaded with friendship.

Having come thus far in the exposition of Montaigne, I shall

conclude with an opinion of my own, even though I cannot quote a

sentence of his to back it.

The one person of all the world in whom talkability is most

desirable, and talkativeness least endurable, is a wife.

A WILD STRAWBERRY

"Such is the story of the Boblink; once spiritual, musical, admired,

the joy of the meadows, and the favourite bird of spring; finally a

gross little sensualist who expiates his sensuality in the larder.

His story contains a moral, worthy the attention of all little birds

and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined and

intellectual pursuits which raised him to so high a pitch of

popularity during the early part of his career; but to eschew all

tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this

mistaken little bird to an untimely end."--WASHINGTON IRVING:

Wolfert's Roost.

The Swiftwater brook was laughing softly to itself as it ran through

a strip of hemlock forest on the edge of the Woodlings' farm. Among

the evergreen branches overhead the gayly-dressed warblers,--little

friends of the forest,--were flitting to and fro, lisping their June

songs of contented love: milder, slower, lazier notes than those in

which they voiced the amourous raptures of May. Prince's Pine and

golden loose-strife and pink laurel and blue hare-bells and purple-

fringed orchids, and a score of lovely flowers were all abloom. The

late spring had hindered some; the sudden heats of early summer had

hastened others; and now they seemed to come out all together, as if

Nature had suddenly tilted up her cornucopia and poured forth her

treasures in spendthrift joy.

I lay on a mossy bank at the foot of a tree, filling my pipe after a

frugal lunch, and thinking how hard it would be to find in any

quarter of the globe a place more fair and fragrant than this hidden

vale among the Alleghany Mountains. The perfume of the flowers of

the forest is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent of tropical

blossoms. No lily-field in Bermuda could give a fragrance half so

magical as the fairy-like odour of these woodland slopes, soft

carpeted with the green of glossy vines above whose tiny leaves, in

delicate profusion,

 "The slight Linnaea hangs its twin-born heads."

Nor are there any birds in Africa, or among the Indian Isles, more

exquisite in colour than these miniature warblers, showing their

gold and green, their orange and black, their blue and white,

against the dark background of the rhododendron thicket.

But how seldom we put a cup of pleasure to our lips without a dash

of bitters, a touch of faultfinding. My drop of discontent, that

day, was the thought that the northern woodland, at least in June,

yielded no fruit to match its beauty and its fragrance.

There is good browsing among the leaves of the wood and the grasses

of the meadow, as every well-instructed angler knows. The bright

emerald tips that break from the hemlock and the balsam like verdant

flames have a pleasant savour to the tongue. The leaves of the

sassafras are full of spice, and the bark of the black-birch twigs

holds a fine cordial. Crinkle-root is spicy, but you must partake

of it delicately, or it will bite your tongue. Spearmint and

peppermint never lose their charm for the palate that still

remembers the delights of youth. Wild sorrel has an agreeable,

sour, shivery flavour. Even the tender stalk of a young blade of

grass is a thing that can be chewed by a person of childlike mind

with much contentment.

But, after all, these are only relishes. They whet the appetite

more than they appease it. There should be something to eat, in the

June woods, as perfect in its kind, as satisfying to the sense of

taste, as the birds and the flowers are to the senses of sight and

hearing and smell. Blueberries are good, but they are far away in

July. Blackberries are luscious when they are fully ripe, but that

will not be until August. Then the fishing will be over, and the

angler's hour of need will be past. The one thing that is lacking

now beside this mountain stream is some fruit more luscious and

dainty than grows in the tropics, to melt upon the lips and fill the

mouth with pleasure.

But that is what these cold northern woods will not offer. They are

too reserved, too lofty, too puritanical to make provision for the

grosser wants of humanity. They are not friendly to luxury.

Just then, as I shifted my head to find a softer pillow of moss

after this philosophic and immoral reflection, Nature gave me her

silent answer. Three wild strawberries, nodding on their long

stems, hung over my face. It was an invitation to taste and see

that they were good.

The berries were not the round and rosy ones of the meadow, but the

long, slender, dark crimson ones of the forest. One, two, three; no

more on that vine; but each one as it touched my lips was a drop of

nectar and a crumb of ambrosia, a concentrated essence of all the

pungent sweetness of the wildwood, sapid, penetrating, and

delicious. I tasted the odour of a hundred blossoms and the green

shimmering of innumerable leaves and the sparkle of sifted sunbeams

and the breath of highland breezes and the song of many birds and

the murmur of flowing streams,--all in a wild strawberry.

Do you remember, in THE COMPLEAT ANGLER, a remark which Isaak Walton

quotes from a certain "Doctor Boteler" about strawberries?

"Doubtless," said that wise old man, "God could have made a better

berry, but doubtless God never did."

Well, the wild strawberry is the one that God made.

I think it would have been pleasant to know a man who could sum up

his reflections upon the important question of berries in such a

pithy saying as that which Walton repeats. His tongue must have

been in close communication with his heart. He must have had a fair

sense of that sprightly humour without which piety itself is often

insipid.

I have often tried to find out more about him, and some day I hope I

shall. But up to the present, all that the books have told me of

this obscure sage is that his name was William Butler, and that he

was an eminent physician, sometimes called "the Aesculapius of his

age." He was born at Ipswich, in l535, and educated at Clare Hall,

Cambridge; in the neighbourhood of which town he appears to have

spent the most of his life, in high repute as a practitioner of

physic. He had the honour of doctoring King James the First after

an accident on the hunting field, and must have proved himself a

pleasant old fellow, for the king looked him up at Cambridge the

next year, and spent an hour in his lodgings. This wise physician

also invented a medicinal beverage called "Doctor Butler's Ale." I

do not quite like the sound of it, but perhaps it was better than

its name. This much is sure, at all events: either it was really a

harmless drink, or else the doctor must have confined its use

entirely to his patients; for he lived to the ripe age of eighty-

three years.

Between the time when William Butler first needed the services of a

physician, in 1535, and the time when he last prescribed for a

patient, in 1618, there was plenty of trouble in England. Bloody

Queen Mary sat on the throne; and there were all kinds of quarrels

about religion and politics; and Catholics and Protestants were

killing one another in the name of God. After that the red-haired

Elizabeth, called the Virgin Queen, wore the crown, and waged

triumphant war and tempestuous love. Then fat James of Scotland was

made king of Great Britain; and Guy Fawkes tried to blow him up with

gunpowder, and failed; and the king tried to blow out all the pipes

in England with his COUNTERBLAST AGAINST TOBACCO; but he failed too.

Somewhere about that time, early in the seventeenth century, a very

small event happened. A new berry was brought over from Virginia,--

FRAGRARIA VIRGINIANA,--and then, amid wars and rumours of wars,

Doctor Butler's happiness was secure. That new berry was so much

richer and sweeter and more generous than the familiar FRAGRARIA

VESCA of Europe, that it attracted the sincere interest of all

persons of good taste. It inaugurated a new era in the history of

the strawberry. The long lost masterpiece of Paradise was restored

to its true place in the affections of man.

Is there not a touch of merry contempt for all the vain

controversies and conflicts of humanity in the grateful ejaculation

with which the old doctor greeted that peaceful, comforting gift of

Providence?

"From this time forward," he seems to say, "the fates cannot beggar

me, for I have eaten strawberries. With every Maytime that visits

this distracted island, the white blossoms with hearts of gold will

arrive. In every June the red drops of pleasant savour will hang

among the scalloped leaves. The children of this world may wrangle

and give one another wounds that even my good ale cannot cure.

Nevertheless, the earth as God created it is a fair dwelling and

full of comfort for all who have a quiet mind and a thankful heart.

Doubtless God might have made a better world, but doubtless this is

the world He made for us; and in it He planted the strawberry."

Fine old doctor! Brave philosopher of cheerfulness! The Virginian

berry should have been brought to England sooner, or you should have

lived longer, at least to a hundred years, so that you might have

welcomed a score of strawberry-seasons with gratitude and an

epigram.

Since that time a great change has passed over the fruit which

Doctor Butler praised so well. That product of creative art which

Divine wisdom did not choose to surpass, human industry has laboured

to improve. It has grown immensely in size and substance. The

traveller from America who steams into Queenstown harbour in early

summer is presented (for a consideration) with a cabbage-leaf full

of pale-hued berries, sweet and juicy, any one of which would

outbulk a dozen of those that used to grow in Virginia when

Pocahontas was smitten with the charms of Captain John Smith. They

are superb, those light-tinted Irish strawberries. And there are

wonderful new varieties developed in the gardens of New Jersey and

Rhode Island, which compare with the ancient berries of the woods

and meadows as Leviathan with a minnow. The huge crimson cushions

hang among the plants so thick that they seem like bunches of fruit

with a few leaves attached for ornament. You can satisfy your

hunger in such a berry-patch in ten minutes, while out in the field

you must pick for half an hour, and in the forest thrice as long,

before you can fill a small tin cup.

Yet, after all, it is questionable whether men have really bettered

God's CHEF D'OEUVRE in the berry line. They have enlarged it and

made it more plentiful and more certain in its harvest. But

sweeter, more fragrant, more poignant in its flavour? No. The wild

berry still stands first in its subtle gusto.

Size is not the measure of excellence. Perfection lies in quality,

not in quantity. Concentration enhances pleasure, gives it a point

so that it goes deeper.

Is not a ten-inch trout better than a ten-foot sturgeon? I would

rather read a tiny essay by Charles Lamb than a five-hundred page

libel on life by a modern British novelist who shall be nameless.

Flavour is the priceless quality. Style is the thing that counts

and is remembered, in literature, in art, and in berries.

No JOCUNDA, nor TRIUMPH, nor VICTORIA, nor any other high-titled

fruit that ever took the first prize at an agricultural fair, is

half so delicate and satisfying as the wild strawberry that dropped

into my mouth, under the hemlock tree, beside the Swiftwater.

A touch of surprise is essential to perfect sweetness.

To get what you have been wishing for is pleasant; but to get what

you have not been sure of, makes the pleasure tingle. A new door of

happiness is opened when you go out to hunt for something and

discover it with your own eyes. But there is an experience even

better than that. When you have stupidly forgotten (or despondently

forgone) to look about you for the unclaimed treasures and unearned

blessings which are scattered along the by-ways of life, then,

sometimes by a special mercy, a small sample of them is quietly laid

before you so that you cannot help seeing it, and it brings you back

to a sense of the joyful possibilities of living.

How full of enjoyment is the search after wild things,--wild birds,

wild flowers, wild honey, wild berries! There was a country club on

Storm King Mountain, above the Hudson River, where they used to

celebrate a festival of flowers every spring. Men and women who had

conservatories of their own, full of rare plants and costly orchids,

came together to admire the gathered blossoms of the woodlands and

meadows. But the people who had the best of the entertainment were

the boys and girls who wandered through the thickets and down the

brooks, pushed their way into the tangled copses and crept

venturesomely across the swamps, to look for the flowers. Some of

the seekers may have had a few gray hairs; but for that day at least

they were all boys and girls. Nature was as young as ever, and they

were all her children. Hand touched hand without a glove. The

hidden blossoms of friendship unfolded. Laughter and merry shouts

and snatches of half-forgotten song rose to the lips. Gay adventure

sparkled in the air. School was out and nobody listened for the

bell. It was just a day to live, and be natural, and take no

thought for the morrow.

There is great luck in this affair of looking for flowers. I do not

see how any one who is prejudiced against games of chance can

consistently undertake it.

For my own part, I approve of garden flowers because they are so

orderly and so certain; but wild flowers I love, just because there

is so much chance about them. Nature is all in favour of certainty

in great laws and of uncertainty in small events. You cannot

appoint the day and the place for her flower-shows. If you happen

to drop in at the right moment she will give you a free admission.

But even then it seems as if the table of beauty had been spread for

the joy of a higher visitor, and in obedience to secret orders which

you have not heard.

Have you ever found the fringed gentian?

      "Just before the snows,

 There came a purple creature

  That lavished all the hill:

 And summer hid her forehead,

  And mockery was still.



 The frosts were her condition:

  The Tyrian would not come

 Until the North evoked her,--

  'Creator, shall I bloom?'"

There are strange freaks of fortune in the finding of wild flowers,

and curious coincidences which make us feel as if some one were

playing friendly tricks on us. I remember reading, one evening in

May, a passage in a good book called THE PROCESSION OF THE FLOWERS,

in which Colonel Higginson describes the singular luck that a friend

of his enjoyed, year after year, in finding the rare blossoms of the

double rueanemone. It seems that this man needed only to take a

walk in the suburbs of any town, and he would come upon a bed of

these flowers, without effort or design. I envied him his good

fortune, for I had never discovered even one of them. But the next

morning, as I strolled out to fish the Swiftwater, down below Billy

Lerns's spring-house I found a green bank in the shadow of the wood

all bespangled with tiny, trembling, twofold stars,--double

rueanemones, for luck! It was a favourable omen, and that day I

came home with a creel full of trout.

The theory that Adam lived out in the woods for some time before he

was put into the garden of Eden "to dress it and to keep it" has an

air of probability. How else shall we account for the arboreal

instincts that cling to his posterity?

There is a wilding strain in our blood that all the civilization in

the world will not eradicate. I never knew a real boy--or, for that

matter, a girl worth knowing--who would not rather climb a tree, any

day, than walk up a golden stairway.

It is a touch of this instinct, I suppose, that makes it more

delightful to fish in the most insignificant of free streams than in

a carefully stocked and preserved pond, where the fish are brought

up by hand and fed on minced liver. Such elaborate precautions to

ensure good luck extract all the spice from the sport of angling.

Casting the fly in such a pond, if you hooked a fish, you might

expect to hear the keeper say, "Ah, that is Charles, we will play

him and put him back, if you please, sir; for the master is very

fond of him,"--or, "Now you have got hold of Edward; let us land him

and keep him; he is three years old this month, and just ready to be

eaten." It would seem like taking trout out of cold storage.

Who could find any pleasure in angling for the tame carp in the

fish-pool of Fontainebleau? They gather at the marble steps, those

venerable, courtly fish, to receive their rations; and there are

veterans among them, in ancient livery, with fringes of green moss

on their shoulders, who could tell you pretty tales of being fed by

the white hands of maids of honour, or even of nibbling their crumbs

of bread from the jewelled fingers of a princess.

There is no sport in bringing pets to the table. It may be

necessary sometimes; but the true sportsman would always prefer to

leave the unpleasant task of execution to menial hands, while he

goes out into the wild country to capture his game by his own

skill,--if he has good luck. I would rather run some risk in this

enterprise (even as the young Tobias did, when the voracious pike

sprang at him from the waters of the Tigris, and would have devoured

him but for the friendly instruction of the piscatory Angel, who

taught Tobias how to land the monster),--I would far rather take any

number of chances in my sport than have it domesticated to the point

of dulness.

The trim plantations of trees which are called "forests" in certain

parts of Europe--scientifically pruned and tended, counted every

year by uniformed foresters, and defended against all possible

depredations--are admirable and useful in their way; but they lack

the mystic enchantment of the fragments of native woodland which

linger among the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, or the vast,

shaggy, sylvan wildernesses which hide the lakes and rivers of

Canada. These Laurentian Hills lie in No Man's Land. Here you do

not need to keep to the path, for there is none. You may make your

own trail, whithersoever fancy leads you; and at night you may pitch

your tent under any tree that looks friendly and firm.

Here, if anywhere, you shall find Dryads, and Naiads, and Oreads.

And if you chance to see one, by moonlight, combing her long hair

beside the glimmering waterfall, or slipping silently, with gleaming

shoulders, through the grove of silver birches, you may call her by

the name that pleases you best. She is all your own discovery.

There is no social directory in the wilderness.

One side of our nature, no doubt, finds its satisfaction in the

regular, the proper, the conventional. But there is another side of

our nature, underneath, that takes delight in the strange, the free,

the spontaneous. We like to discover what we call a law of Nature,

and make our calculations about it, and harness the force which lies

behind it for our own purposes. But we taste a different kind of

joy when an event occurs which nobody has foreseen or counted upon.

It seems like an evidence that there is something in the world which

is alive and mysterious and untrammelled.

The weather-prophet tells us of an approaching storm. It comes

according to the programme. We admire the accuracy of the

prediction, and congratulate ourselves that we have such a good

meteorological service. But when, perchance, a bright, crystalline

piece of weather arrives instead of the foretold tempest, do we not

feel a secret sense of pleasure which goes beyond our mere comfort

in the sunshine? The whole affair is not as easy as a sum in simple

addition, after all,--at least not with our present knowledge. It

is a good joke on the Weather Bureau. "Aha, Old Probabilities!" we

say, "you don't know it all yet; there are still some chances to be

taken!"

Some day, I suppose, all things in the heavens above, and in the

earth beneath, and in the hearts of the men and women who dwell

between, will be investigated and explained. We shall live a

perfectly ordered life, with no accidents, happy or unhappy.

Everybody will act according to rule, and there will be no dotted

lines on the map of human existence, no regions marked "unexplored."

Perhaps that golden age of the machine will come, but you and I will

hardly live to see it. And if that seems to you a matter for tears,

you must do your own weeping, for I cannot find it in my heart to

add a single drop of regret.

The results of education and social discipline in humanity are fine.

It is a good thing that we can count upon them. But at the same

time let us rejoice in the play of native traits and individual

vagaries. Cultivated manners are admirable, yet there is a sudden

touch of inborn grace and courtesy that goes beyond them all. No

array of accomplishments can rival the charm of an unsuspected gift

of nature, brought suddenly to light. I once heard a peasant girl

singing down the Traunthal, and the echo of her song outlives, in

the hearing of my heart, all memories of the grand opera.

The harvest of the gardens and the orchards, the result of prudent

planting and patient cultivation, is full of satisfaction. We

anticipate it in due season, and when it comes we fill our mouths

and are grateful. But pray, kind Providence, let me slip over the

fence out of the garden now and then, to shake a nut-tree that grows

untended in the wood. Give me liberty to put off my black coat for

a day, and go a-fishing on a free stream, and find by chance a wild

strawberry.

LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE

"He insisted that the love that was of real value in the world was

n't interesting, and that the love that was interesting was n't

always admirable. Love that happened to a person like the measles

or fits, and was really of no particular credit to itself or its

victims, was the sort that got into the books and was made much of;

whereas the kind that was attained by the endeavour of true souls,

and that had wear in it, and that made things go right instead of

tangling them up, was too much like duty to make satisfactory

reading for people of sentiment."--E. S. MARTIN: My Cousin Anthony.

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is

another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a

month.

The first day of spring is due to arrive, if the calendar does not

break down, about the twenty-first of March, when the earth turns

the corner of Sun Alley and starts for Summer Street. But the first

spring day is not on the time-table at all. It comes when it is

ready, and in the latitude of New York this is usually not till

after All Fools' Day.

About this time,--

 "When chinks in April's windy dome

  Let through a day of June,

  And foot and thought incline to roam,

  And every sound's a tune,"--

it is the habit of the angler who lives in town to prepare for the

labours of the approaching season by longer walks or bicycle-rides

in the parks, or along the riverside, or in the somewhat demoralized

Edens of the suburbs. In the course of these vernal peregrinations

and circumrotations, I observe that lovers of various kinds begin to

occupy a notable place in the landscape.

The burnished dove puts a livelier iris around his neck, and

practises fantastic bows and amourous quicksteps along the verandah

of the pigeon-house and on every convenient roof. The young male of

the human species, less gifted in the matter of rainbows, does his

best with a gay cravat, and turns the thoughts which circulate above

it towards the securing or propitiating of a best girl.

The objects of these more or less brilliant attentions, doves and

girls, show a becoming reciprocity, and act in a way which leads us

to infer (so far as inferences hold good in the mysterious region of

female conduct) that they are not seriously displeased. To a

rightly tempered mind, pleasure is a pleasant sight. And the

philosophic observer who could look upon this spring spectacle of

the lovers with any but friendly feelings would be indeed what the

great Dr. Samuel Johnson called "a person not to be envied."

Far be it from me to fall into such a desiccated and supercilious

mood. My small olive-branch of fancy will be withered, in truth,

and ready to drop budless from the tree, when I cease to feel a mild

delight in the billings and cooings of the little birds that

separate from the flocks to fly together in pairs, or in the

uninstructive but mutually satisfactory converse which Strephon

holds with Chloe while they dally along the primrose path.

I am glad that even the stony and tumultuous city affords some

opportunities for these amiable observations. In the month of April

there is hardly a clump of shrubbery in the Central Park which will

not serve as a trysting-place for yellow warblers and catbirds just

home from their southern tours. At the same time, you shall see

many a bench, designed for the accommodation of six persons,

occupied at the sunset hour by only two, and apparently so much too

small for them that they cannot avoid a little crowding.

These are infallible signs. Taken in conjunction with the eruption

of tops and marbles among the small boys, and the purchase of

fishing-tackle and golf-clubs by the old boys, they certify us that

the vernal equinox has arrived, not only in the celestial regions,

but also in the heart of man.

I have been reflecting of late upon the relation of lovers to the

landscape, and questioning whether art has given it quite the same

place as that which belongs to it in nature. In fiction, for

example, and in the drama, and in music, I have some vague

misgivings that romantic love has come to hold a more prominent and

a more permanent position than it fills in real life.

This is dangerous ground to venture upon, even in the most modest

and deprecatory way. The man who expresses an opinion, or even a

doubt, on this subject, contrary to the ruling traditions, will have

a swarm of angry critics buzzing about him. He will be called a

heretic, a heathen, a cold-blooded freak of nature. As for the

woman who hesitates to subscribe all the thirty-nine articles of

romantic love, if such a one dares to put her reluctance into words,

she is certain to be accused either of unwomanly ambition or of

feminine disappointment.

Let us make haste, then, to get back for safety to the

ornithological aspect of the subject. Here there can be no

penalties for heresy. And here I make bold to avow my conviction

that the pairing season is not the only point of interest in the

life of the birds; nor is the instinct by which they mate altogether

and beyond comparison the noblest passion that stirs their feathered

breasts.

'T is true, the time of mating is their prettiest season; but it is

very short. How little we should know of the drama of their airy

life if we had eyes only for this brief scene! Their finest

qualities come out in the patient cares that protect the young in

the nest, in the varied struggles for existence through the changing

year, and in the incredible heroisms of the annual migrations.

Herein is a parable.

It may be observed further, without fear of rebuke, that the

behaviour of the different kinds of birds during the prevalence of

romantic love is not always equally above reproach. The courtship

of English sparrows--blustering, noisy, vulgar--is a sight to offend

the taste of every gentle on-looker. Some birds reiterate and

vociferate their love-songs in a fashion that displays their

inconsiderateness as well as their ignorance of music. This trait

is most marked in domestic fowls. There was a guinea-cock, once,

that chose to do his wooing close under the window of a farm-house

where I was lodged. He had no regard for my hours of sleep or

meditation. His amatory click-clack prevented the morning and

wrecked the tranquillity of the evening. It was odious, brutal,--

worse, it was absolutely thoughtless. Herein is another parable.

Let us admit cheerfully that lovers have a place in the landscape

and lend a charm to it. This does not mean that they are to take up

all the room there is. Suppose, for example, that a pair of them,

on Goat Island, put themselves in such a position as to completely

block out your view of Niagara. You cannot regard them with

gratitude. They even become a little tedious. Or suppose that you

are visiting at a country-house, and you find that you must not

enjoy the moonlight on the verandah because Augustus and Amanda are

murmuring in one corner, and that you must not go into the garden

because Louis and Lizzie are there, and that you cannot have a sail

on the lake because Richard and Rebecca have taken the boat.

Of course, unless you happen to be a selfish old curmudgeon, you

rejoice, by sympathy, in the happiness of these estimable young

people. But you fail to see why it should cover so much ground.

Why should they not pool their interests, and all go out in the

boat, or all walk in the garden, or all sit on the verandah? Then

there would be room for somebody else about the place.

In old times you could rely upon lovers for retirement. But

nowadays their role seems to be a bold ostentation of their

condition. They rely upon other people to do the timid, shrinking

part. Society, in America, is arranged principally for their

convenience; and whatever portion of the landscape strikes their

fancy, they preempt and occupy. All this goes upon the presumption

that romantic love is really the only important interest in life.

This train of thought was illuminated, the other night, by an

incident which befell me at a party. It was an assembly of men,

drawn together by their common devotion to the sport of canoeing.

There were only three or four of the gentler sex present (as

honorary members), and only one of whom it could be suspected that

she was at that time a victim or an object of the tender passion.

In the course of the evening, by way of diversion to our

disputations on keels and centreboards, canvas and birch-bark,

cedar-wood and bass-wood, paddles and steering-gear, a fine young

Apollo, with a big, manly voice, sang us a few songs. But he did

not chant the joys of weathering a sudden squall, or running a rapid

feather-white with foam, or floating down a long, quiet, elm-bowered

river. Not all. His songs were full of sighs and yearnings,

languid lips and sheep's-eyes. His powerful voice informed us that

crowns of thorns seemed like garlands of roses, and kisses were as

sweet as samples of heaven, and various other curious sensations

were experienced; and at the end of every stanza the reason was

stated, in tones of thunder--

 "Because I love you, dear."

Even if true, it seemed inappropriate. How foolish the average

audience in a drawing-room looks while it is listening to passionate

love-ditties! And yet I suppose the singer chose these songs, not

from any malice aforethought, but simply because songs of this kind

are so abundant that it is next to impossible to find anything else

in the shops.

In regard to novels, the situation is almost as discouraging. Ten

love-stories are printed to one of any other kind. We have a

standing invitation to consider the tribulations and difficulties of

some young man or young woman in finding a mate. It must be

admitted that the subject has its capabilities of interest. Nature

has her uses for the lover, and she gives him an excellent part to

play in the drama of life. But is this tantamount to saying that

his interest is perennial and all-absorbing, and that his role on

the stage is the only one that is significant and noteworthy?

Life is much too large to be expressed in the terms of a single

passion. Friendship, patriotism, parental tenderness, filial

devotion, the ardour of adventure, the thirst for knowledge, the

ecstasy of religion,--these all have their dwelling in the heart of

man. They mould character. They control conduct. They are stars

of destiny shining in the inner firmament. And if art would truly

hold the mirror up to nature, it must reflect these greater and

lesser lights that rule the day and the night.

How many of the plays that divert and misinform the modern theatre-

goer turn on the pivot of a love-affair, not always pure, but

generally simple! And how many of those that are imported from

France proceed upon the theory that the Seventh is the only

Commandment, and that the principal attraction of life lies in the

opportunity of breaking it! The matinee-girl is not likely to have

a very luminous or truthful idea of existence floating around in her

pretty little head.

But, after all, the great plays, those that take the deepest hold

upon the heart, like HAMLET and KING LEAR, MACBETH and OTHELLO, are

not love-plays. And the most charming comedies, like THE WINTER'S

TALE, and THE RIVALS, and RIP VAN WINKLE, are chiefly memorable for

other things than love-scenes.

Even in novels, love shows at its best when it does not absorb the

whole plot. LORNA DOONE is a lovers' story, but there is a blessed

minimum of spooning in it, and always enough of working and fighting

to keep the air clear and fresh. THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN, and

HYPATIA, and ROMOLA, and THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH, and JOHN

INGLESANT, and THE THREE MUSKETEERS, and NOTRE DAME, and PEACE AND

WAR, and QUO VADIS,--these are great novels because they are much

more than tales of romantic love. As for HENRY ESMOND, (which seems

to me the best of all,) certainly "love at first sight" does not

play the finest role in that book.

There are good stories of our own day--pathetic, humourous,

entertaining, powerful--in which the element of romantic love is

altogether subordinate, or even imperceptible. THE RISE OF SILAS

LAPHAM does not owe its deep interest to the engagement of the very

charming young people who enliven it. MADAME DELPHINE and OLE

'STRACTED are perfect stories of their kind. I would not barter THE

JUNGLE BOOKS for a hundred of THE BRUSHWOOD BOY.

The truth is that love, considered merely as the preference of one

person for another of the opposite sex, is not "the greatest thing

in the world." It becomes great only when it leads on, as it often

does, to heroism and self-sacrifice and fidelity. Its chief value

for art (the interpreter) lies not in itself, but in its quickening

relation to the other elements of life. It must be seen and shown

in its due proportion, and in harmony with the broader landscape.

Do you believe that in all the world there is only one woman

specially created for each man, and that the order of the universe

will be hopelessly askew unless these two needles find each other in

the haystack? You believe it for yourself, perhaps; but do you

believe it for Tom Johnson? You remember what a terrific

disturbance he made in the summer of 189-, at Bar Harbor, about

Ellinor Brown, and how he ran away with her in September. You have

also seen them together (occasionally) at Lenox and Newport, since

their marriage. Are you honestly of the opinion that if Tom had not

married Ellinor, these two young lives would have been a total

wreck?

Adam Smith, in his book on THE MORAL SENTIMENTS, goes so far as to

say that "love is not interesting to the observer because it is AN

AFFECTION OF THE IMAGINATION, into which it is difficult for a third

party to enter." Something of the same kind occurred to me in

regard to Tom and Ellinor. Yet I would not have presumed to suggest

this thought to either of them. Nor would I have quoted in their

hearing the melancholy and frigid prediction of Ralph Waldo Emerson,

to the effect that they would some day discover "that all which at

first drew them together--those once sacred features, that magical

play of charm--was deciduous."

DECIDUOUS, indeed? Cold, unpleasant, botanical word! Rather would

I prognosticate for the lovers something perennial,

 "A sober certainty of waking bliss,common about it.  It was his habit to succeed, and all the 

rest of us were hardened to it.

When he married Cornelia Cochrane, we were consoled for our partial

loss by the apparent fitness and brilliancy of the match. If

Beekman was a masterful man, Cornelia was certainly what you might

call a mistressful woman. She had been the head of her house since

she was eighteen years old. She carried her good looks like the

family plate; and when she came into the breakfast-room and said

good-morning, it was with an air as if she presented every one with

a check for a thousand dollars. Her tastes were accepted as

judgments, and her preferences had the force of laws. Wherever she

wanted to go in the summer-time, there the finger of household

destiny pointed. At Newport, at Bar Harbour, at Lenox, at

Southampton, she made a record. When she was joined in holy wedlock

to Beekman De Peyster, her father and mother heaved a sigh of

satisfaction, and settled down for a quiet vacation in Cherry

Valley.

It was in the second summer after the wedding that Beekman admitted

to a few of his ancient Petrine cronies, in moments of confidence

(unjustifiable, but natural), that his wife had one fault.

"It is not exactly a fault," he said, "not a positive fault, you

know. It is just a kind of a defect, due to her education, of

course. In everything else she's magnificent. But she does n't

care for fishing. "

to survive the evanescence of love's young dream. Ellinor should

turn out to be a woman like the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, of whom

Richard Steele wrote that "to love her was a liberal education."

Tom should prove that he had in him the lasting stuff of a true man

and a hero. Then it would make little difference whether their

conjunction had been eternally prescribed in the book of fate or

not. It would be evidently a fit match, made on earth and

illustrative of heaven.

But even in the making of such a match as this, the various stages

of attraction, infatuation, and appropriation should not be

displayed too prominently before the world, nor treated as events of

overwhelming importance and enduring moment. I would not counsel

Tom and Ellinor, in the midsummer of their engagement, to have their

photographs taken together in affectionate attitudes.

The pictures of an imaginary kind which deal with the subject of

romantic love are, almost without exception, fatuous and futile.

The inanely amatory, with their languishing eyes, weary us. The

endlessly osculatory, with their protracted salutations, are

sickening. Even when an air of sentimental propriety is thrown

about them by some such title as "Wedded" or "The Honeymoon," they

fatigue us. For the most part, they remind me of the remark which

the Commodore made upon a certain painting of Jupiter and lo which

hangs in the writing-room of the Contrary Club.

"Sir," said that gently piercing critic, "that picture is equally

unsatisfactory to the artist, to the moralist, and to the

voluptuary."

Nevertheless, having made a clean breast of my misgivings and

reservations on the subject of lovers and landscape, I will now

confess that the whole of my doubts do not weigh much against my

unreasoned faith in romantic love. At heart I am no infidel, but a

most obstinate believer and devotee. My seasons of skepticism are

transient. They are connected with a torpid liver and aggravated by

confinement to a sedentary life and enforced abstinence from

angling. Out-of-doors, I return to a saner and happier frame of

mind.

As my wheel rolls along the Riverside Drive in the golden glow of

the sunset, I rejoice that the episode of Charles Henry and Matilda

Jane has not been omitted from the view. This vast and populous

city, with all its passing show of life, would be little better than

a waste, howling wilderness if we could not catch a glimpse, now and

then, of young people falling in love in the good old-fashioned way.

Even on a trout-stream, I have seen nothing prettier than the sight

upon which I once came suddenly as I was fishing down the Neversink.

A boy was kneeling beside the brook, and a girl was giving him a

drink of water out of her rosy hands. They stared with wonder and

compassion at the wet and solitary angler, wading down the stream,

as if he were some kind of a mild lunatic. But as I glanced

discreetly at their small tableau, I was not unconscious of the new

joy that came into the landscape with the presence of

 "A lover and his lass."

I knew how sweet the water tasted from that kind of a cup. I also

have lived in Arcadia, and have not forgotten the way back.

A FATAL SUCCESS

"What surprises me in her behaviour," said he, "is its thoroughness.

Woman seldom does things by halves, but often by doubles."--SOLOMON

SINGLEWITZ: The Life of Adam.

Beekman De Peyster was probably the most passionate and triumphant

fisherman in the Petrine Club. He angled with the same dash and

confidence that he threw into his operations in the stock-market.

He was sure to be the first man to get his flies on the water at the

opening of the season. And when we came together for our fall

meeting, to compare notes of our wanderings on various streams and

make up the fish-stories for the year, Beekman was almost always

"high hook." We expected, as a matter of course, to hear that he

had taken the most and the largest fish.

It was so with everything that he undertook. He was a masterful

man. If there was an unusually large trout in a river, Beekman knew

about it before any one else, and got there first, and came home

with the fish. It did not make him unduly proud, because there was

nothing unShe says it 's stupid,--can't see why any one

should like the woods,--calls camping out the lunatic's diversion.

It 's rather awkward for a man with my habits to have his wife take

such a view. But it can be changed by training. I intend to

educate her and convert her. I shall make an angler of her yet."

And so he did.

The new education was begun in the Adirondacks, and the first lesson

was given at Paul Smith's. It was a complete failure.

Beekman persuaded her to come out with him for a day on Meacham

River, and promised to convince her of the charm of angling. She

wore a new gown, fawn-colour and violet, with a picture-hat, very

taking. But the Meacham River trout was shy that day; not even

Beekman could induce him to rise to the fly. What the trout lacked

in confidence the mosquitoes more than made up. Mrs. De Peyster

came home much sunburned, and expressed a highly unfavourable

opinion of fishing as an amusement and of Meacham River as a resort.

"The nice people don't come to the Adirondacks to fish," said she;

"they come to talk about the fishing twenty years ago. Besides,

what do you want to catch that trout for? If you do, the other men

will say you bought it, and the hotel will have to put in a new one

for the rest of the season."

The following year Beekman tried Moosehead Lake. Here he found an

atmosphere more favourable to his plan of education. There were a

good many people who really fished, and short expeditions in the

woods were quite fashionable. Cornelia had a camping-costume of the

most approved style made by Dewlap on Fifth Avenue,--pearl-gray with

linings of rose-silk,--and consented to go with her husband on a

trip up Moose River. They pitched their tent the first evening at

the mouth of Misery Stream, and a storm came on. The rain sifted

through the canvas in a fine spray, and Mrs. De Peyster sat up all

night in a waterproof cloak, holding an umbrella. The next day they

were back at the hotel in time for lunch.

"It was horrid," she told her most intimate friend, "perfectly

horrid. The idea of sleeping in a shower-bath, and eating your

breakfast from a tin plate, just for sake of catching a few silly

fish! Why not send your guides out to get them for you?"

But, in spite of this profession of obstinate heresy, Beekman

observed with secret joy that there were signs, before the end of

the season, that Cornelia was drifting a little, a very little but

still perceptibly, in the direction of a change of heart. She began

to take an interest, as the big trout came along in September, in

the reports of the catches made by the different anglers. She would

saunter out with the other people to the corner of the porch to see

the fish weighed and spread out on the grass. Several times she

went with Beekman in the canoe to Hardscrabble Point, and showed

distinct evidences of pleasure when he caught large trout. The last

day of the season, when he returned from a successful expedition to

Roach River and Lily Bay, she inquired with some particularity about

the results of his sport; and in the evening, as the company sat

before the great open fire in the hall of the hotel, she was heard

to use this information with considerable skill in putting down Mrs.

Minot Peabody of Boston, who was recounting the details of her

husband's catch at Spencer Pond. Cornelia was not a person to be

contented with the back seat, even in fish-stories.

When Beekman observed these indications he was much encouraged, and

resolved to push his educational experiment briskly forward to his

customary goal of success.

"Some things can be done, as well as others," he said in his

masterful way, as three of us were walking home together after the

autumnal dinner of the Petrine Club, which he always attended as a

graduate member. "A real fisherman never gives up. I told you I'd

make an angler out of my wife; and so I will. It has been rather

difficult. She is 'dour' in rising. But she's beginning to take

notice of the fly now. Give me another season, and I'll have her

landed."

Good old Beekman! Little did he think-- But I must not interrupt

the story with moral reflections.

The preparations that he made for his final effort at conversion

were thorough and prudent. He had a private interview with Dewlap

in regard to the construction of a practical fishing-costume for a

lady, which resulted in something more reasonable and workmanlike

than had ever been turned out by that famous artist. He ordered

from Hook and Catchett a lady's angling-outfit of the most enticing

description,--a split-bamboo rod, light as a girl's wish, and strong

as a matron's will; an oxidized silver reel, with a monogram on one

side, and a sapphire set in the handle for good luck; a book of

flies, of all sizes and colours, with the correct names inscribed in

gilt letters on each page. He surrounded his favourite sport with

an aureole of elegance and beauty. And then he took Cornelia in

September to the Upper Dam at Rangeley.

She went reluctant. She arrived disgusted. She stayed incredulous.

She returned-- Wait a bit, and you shall hear how she returned.

The Upper Dam at Rangeley is the place, of all others in the world,

where the lunacy of angling may be seen in its incurable stage.

There is a cosy little inn, called a camp, at the foot of a big

lake. In front of the inn is a huge dam of gray stone, over which

the river plunges into a great oval pool, where the trout assemble

in the early fall to perpetuate their race. From the tenth of

September to the thirtieth, there is not an hour of the day or night

when there are no boats floating on that pool, and no anglers

trailing the fly across its waters. Before the late fishermen are

ready to come in at midnight, the early fishermen may be seen

creeping down to the shore with lanterns in order to begin before

cock-crow. The number of fish taken is not large,--perhaps five or

six for the whole company on an average day,--but the size is

sometimes enormous,--nothing under three pounds is counted,--and

they pervade thought and conversation at the Upper Dam to the

exclusion of every other subject. There is no driving, no dancing,

no golf, no tennis. There is nothing to do but fish or die.

At first, Cornelia thought she would choose the latter alternative.

But a remark of that skilful and morose old angler, McTurk, which

she overheard on the verandah after supper, changed her mind.

"Women have no sporting instinct," said he. "They only fish because

they see men doing it. They are imitative animals."

That same night she told Beekman, in the subdued tone which the

architectural construction of the house imposes upon all

confidential communications in the bedrooms, but with resolution in

every accent, that she proposed to go fishing with him on the

morrow.

"But not on that pool, right in front of the house, you understand.

There must be some other place, out on the lake, where we can fish

for three or four days, until I get the trick of this wobbly rod.

Then I'll show that old bear, McTurk, what kind of an animal woman

is.

Beekman was simply delighted. Five days of diligent practice at the

mouth of Mill Brook brought his pupil to the point where he

pronounced her safe.

"Of course," he said patronizingly, "you have 'nt learned all about

it yet. That will take years. But you can get your fly out thirty

feet, and you can keep the tip of your rod up. If you do that, the

trout will hook himself, in rapid water, eight times out of ten.

For playing him, if you follow my directions, you 'll be all right.

We will try the pool tonight, and hope for a medium-sized fish."

Cornelia said nothing, but smiled and nodded. She had her own

thoughts.

At about nine o'clock Saturday night, they anchored their boat on

the edge of the shoal where the big eddy swings around, put out the

lantern and began to fish. Beekman sat in the bow of the boat, with

his rod over the left side; Cornelia in the stern, with her rod over

the right side. The night was cloudy and very black. Each of them

had put on the largest possible fly, one a "Bee-Pond" and the other

a "Dragon;" but even these were invisible. They measured out the

right length of line, and let the flies drift back until they hung

over the shoal, in the curly water where the two currents meet.

There were three other boats to the left of them. McTurk was their

only neighbour in the darkness on the right. Once they heard him

swearing softly to himself, and knew that he had hooked and lost a

fish.

Away down at the tail of the pool, dimly visible through the gloom,

the furtive fisherman, Parsons, had anchored his boat. No noise

ever came from that craft. If he wished to change his position, he

did not pull up the anchor and let it down again with a bump. He

simply lengthened or shortened his anchor rope. There was no click

of the reel when he played a fish. He drew in and paid out the line

through the rings by hand, without a sound. What he thought when a

fish got away, no one knew, for he never said it. He concealed his

angling as if it had been a conspiracy. Twice that night they heard

a faint splash in the water near his boat, and twice they saw him

put his arm over the side in the darkness and bring it back again

very quietly.

"That 's the second fish for Parsons," whispered Beekman, "what a

secretive old Fortunatus he is! He knows more about fishing than

any man on the pool, and talks less."

Cornelia did not answer. Her thoughts were all on the tip of her

own rod. About eleven o'clock a fine, drizzling rain set in. The

fishing was very slack. All the other boats gave it up in despair;

but Cornelia said she wanted to stay out a little longer, they might

as well finish up the week.

At precisely fifty minutes past eleven, Beekman reeled up his line,

and remarked with firmness that the holy Sabbath day was almost at

hand and they ought to go in.

"Not till I 've landed this trout," said Cornelia.

"What? A trout! Have you got one?"

"Certainly; I 've had him on for at least fifteen minutes. I 'm

playing him Mr. Parsons' way. You might as well light the lantern

and get the net ready; he 's coming in towards the boat now."

Beekman broke three matches before he made the lantern burn; and

when he held it up over the gunwale, there was the trout sure

enough, gleaming ghostly pale in the dark water, close to the boat,

and quite tired out. He slipped the net over the fish and drew it

in,--a monster.

"I 'll carry that trout, if you please," said Cornelia, as they

stepped out of the boat; and she walked into the camp, on the last

stroke of midnight, with the fish in her hand, and quietly asked for

the steelyard.

Eight pounds and fourteen ounces,--that was the weight. Everybody

was amazed. It was the "best fish" of the year. Cornelia showed no

sign of exultation, until just as John was carrying the trout to the

ice-house. Then she flashed out:--"Quite a fair imitation, Mr.

McTurk,--is n't it?"

Now McTurk's best record for the last fifteen years was seven pounds

and twelve ounces.

So far as McTurk is concerned, this is the end of the story. But

not for the De Peysters. I wish it were. Beekman went to sleep

that night with a contented spirit. He felt that his experiment in

education had been a success. He had made his wife an angler.

He had indeed, and to an extent which he little suspected. That

Upper Dam trout was to her like the first taste of blood to the

tiger. It seemed to change, at once, not so much her character as

the direction of her vital energy. She yielded to the lunacy of

angling, not by slow degrees, (as first a transient delusion, then a

fixed idea, then a chronic infirmity, finally a mild insanity,) but

by a sudden plunge into the most violent mania. So far from being

ready to die at Upper Dam, her desire now was to live there--and to

live solely for the sake of fishing--as long as the season was open.

There were two hundred and forty hours left to midnight on the

thirtieth of September. At least two hundred of these she spent on

the pool; and when Beekman was too exhausted to manage the boat and

the net and the lantern for her, she engaged a trustworthy guide to

take Beekman's place while he slept. At the end of the last day her

score was twenty-three, with an average of five pounds and a

quarter. His score was nine, with an average of four pounds. He

had succeeded far beyond his wildest hopes.

The next year his success became even more astonishing. They went

to the Titan Club in Canada. The ugliest and most inaccessible

sheet of water in that territory is Lake Pharaoh. But it is famous

for the extraordinary fishing at a certain spot near the outlet,

where there is just room enough for one canoe. They camped on Lake

Pharaoh for six weeks, by Mrs. De Peyster's command; and her canoe

was always the first to reach the fishing-ground in the morning, and

the last to leave it in the evening.

Some one asked him, when he returned to the city, whether he had

good luck.

"Quite fair," he tossed off in a careless way; "we took over three

hundred pounds."

"To your own rod?" asked the inquirer, in admiration.

"No-o-o," said Beekman, "there were two of us."

There were two of them, also, the following year, when they joined

the Natasheebo Salmon Club and fished that celebrated river in

Labrador. The custom of drawing lots every night for the water that

each member was to angle over the next day, seemed to be especially

designed to fit the situation. Mrs. De Peyster could fish her own

pool and her husband's too. The result of that year's fishing was

something phenomenal. She had a score that made a paragraph in the

newspapers and called out editorial comment. One editor was so

inadequate to the situation as to entitle the article in which he

described her triumph "The Equivalence of Woman." It was well-

meant, but she was not at all pleased with it.

She was now not merely an angler, but a "record" angler of the most

virulent type. Wherever they went, she wanted, and she got, the

pick of the water. She seemed to be equally at home on all kinds of

streams, large and small. She would pursue the little mountain-

brook trout in the early spring, and the Labrador salmon in July,

and the huge speckled trout of the northern lakes in September, with

the same avidity and resolution. All that she cared for was to get

the best and the most of the fishing at each place where she angled.

This she always did.

And Beekman,--well, for him there were no more long separations from

the partner of his life while he went off to fish some favourite

stream. There were no more home-comings after a good day's sport to

find her clad in cool and dainty raiment on the verandah, ready to

welcome him with friendly badinage. There was not even any casting

of the fly around Hardscrabble Point while she sat in the canoe

reading a novel, looking up with mild and pleasant interest when he

caught a larger fish than usual, as an older and wiser person looks

at a child playing some innocent game. Those days of a divided

interest between man and wife were gone. She was now fully

converted, and more. Beekman and Cornelia were one; and she was the

one.

The last time I saw the De Peysters he was following her along the

Beaverkill, carrying a landing-net and a basket, but no rod. She

paused for a moment to exchange greetings, and then strode on down

the stream. He lingered for a few minutes longer to light a pipe.

"Well, old man," I said, "you certainly have succeeded in making an

angler of Mrs. De Peyster."

"Yes, indeed," he answered,--"have n't I?" Then he continued, after

a few thoughtful puffs of smoke, "Do you know, I 'm not quite so

sure as I used to be that fishing is the best of all sports. I

sometimes think of giving it up and going in for croquet."

FISHING IN BOOKS

"SIMPSON.--Have you ever seen any American books on angling, Fisher?"

"FISHER.--No, I do not think there are any published. Brother

Jonathan is not yet sufficiently civilized to produce anything

original on the gentle art. There is good trout-fishing in America,

and the streams, which are all free, are much less fished than in

our Island, 'from the small number of gentlemen,' as an American

writer says, 'who are at leisure to give their time to it.'"

--WILLIAM ANDREW CHATTO: The Angler's Souvenir (London, 1835).

That wise man and accomplished scholar, Sir Henry Wotton, the friend

of Izaak Walton and ambassador of King James I to the republic of

Venice, was accustomed to say that "he would rather live five May

months than forty Decembers." The reason for this preference was no

secret to those who knew him. It had nothing to do with British or

Venetian politics. It was simply because December, with all its

domestic joys, is practically a dead month in the angler's calendar.

His occupation is gone. The better sort of fish are out of season.

The trout are lean and haggard: it is no trick to catch them and no

treat to eat them. The salmon, all except the silly kelts, have run

out to sea, and the place of their habitation no man kno his goings, that only three

other writers, so far as I know, have ever spoken ill of him.

weth. There

is nothing for the angler to do but wait for the return of spring,

and meanwhile encourage and sustain his patience with such small

consolations in kind as a friendly Providence may put within his

reach.

Some solace may be found, on a day of crisp, wintry weather, in the

childish diversion of catching pickerel through the ice. This

method of taking fish is practised on a large scale and with

elaborate machinery by men who supply the market. I speak not of

their commercial enterprise and its gross equipage, but of ice-

fishing in its more sportive and desultory form, as it is pursued by

country boys and the incorrigible village idler.

You choose for this pastime a pond where the ice is not too thick,

lest the labour of cutting through should be discouraging; nor too

thin, lest the chance of breaking in should be embarrassing. You

then chop out, with almost any kind of a hatchet or pick, a number

of holes in the ice, making each one six or eight inches in

diameter, and placing them about five or six feet apart. If you

happen to know the course of a current flowing through the pond, or

the location of a shoal frequented by minnows, you will do well to

keep near it. Over each hole you set a small contrivance called a

"tilt-up." It consists of two sticks fastened in the middle, at

right angles to each other. The stronger of the two is laid across

the opening in the ice. The other is thus balanced above the

aperture, with a baited hook and line attached to one end, while the

other end is adorned with a little flag. For choice, I would have

the flags red. They look gayer, and I imagine they are more lucky.

When you have thus baited and set your tilt-ups,--twenty or thirty

of them,--you may put on your skates and amuse yourself by gliding

to and fro on the smooth surface of the ice, cutting figures of

eight and grapevines and diamond twists, while you wait for the

pickerel to begin their part of the performance. They will let you

know when they are ready.

A fish, swimming around in the dim depths under the ice, sees one of

your baits, fancies it, and takes it in. The moment he tries to run

away with it he tilts the little red flag into the air and waves it

backward and forward. "Be quick!" he signals all unconsciously;

"here I am; come and pull me up!"

When two or three flags are fluttering at the same moment, far apart

on the pond, you must skate with speed and haul in your lines

promptly.

How hard it is, sometimes, to decide which one you will take first!

That flag in the middle of the pond has been waving for at least a

minute; but the other, in the corner of the bay, is tilting up and

down more violently: it must be a larger fish. Great Dagon! There's

another red signal flying, away over by the point! You hesitate,

you make a few strokes in one direction, then you whirl around and

dart the other way. Meantime one of the tilt-ups, constructed with

too short a cross-stick, has been pulled to one side, and disappears

in the hole. One pickerel in the pond carries a flag. Another

tilt-up ceases to move and falls flat upon the ice. The bait has

been stolen. You dash desperately toward the third flag and pull in

the only fish that is left,--probably the smallest of them all!

A surplus of opportunities does not insure the best luck.

A room with seven doors--like the famous apartment in Washington's

headquarters at Newburgh--is an invitation to bewilderment. I would

rather see one fair opening in life than be confused by three

dazzling chances.

There was a good story about fishing through the ice which formed

part of the stock-in-conversation of that ingenious woodsman, Martin

Moody, Esquire, of Big Tupper Lake. "'T was a blame cold day," he

said, "and the lines friz up stiffer 'n a fence-wire, jus' as fast

as I pulled 'em in, and my fingers got so dum' frosted I could n't

bait the hooks. But the fish was thicker and hungrier 'n flies in

June. So I jus' took a piece of bait and held it over one o' the

holes. Every time a fish jumped up to git it, I 'd kick him out on

the ice. I tell ye, sir, I kicked out more 'n four hundred pounds

of pick'rel that morning. Yaas, 't was a big lot, I 'low, but then

't was a cold day! I jus' stacked 'em up solid, like cordwood."

Let us now leave this frigid subject! Iced fishing is but a

chilling and unsatisfactory imitation of real sport. The angler

will soon turn from it with satiety, and seek a better consolation

for the winter of his discontent in the entertainment of fishing in

books.

Angling is the only sport that boasts the honour of having given a

classic to literature.

Izaak Walton's success with THE COMPLEAT ANGLER was a fine

illustration of fisherman's luck. He set out, with some aid from an

adept in fly-fishing and cookery, named Thomas Barker, to produce a

little "discourse of fish and fishing" which should serve as a

useful manual for quiet persons inclined to follow the contemplative

man's recreation. He came home with a book which has made his name

beloved by ten generations of gentle readers, and given him a secure

place in the Pantheon of letters,--not a haughty eminence, but a

modest niche, all his own, and ever adorned with grateful offerings

of fresh flowers.

This was great luck. But it was well-deserved, and therefore it has

not been grudged or envied.

Walton was a man so peaceful and contented, so friendly in his

disposition, and so innocent in allOne was that sour-complexioned Cromwellian trooper, Richard Franck,

who wrote in 1658 an envious book entitled NORTHERN MEMOIRS,

CALCULATED FOR THE MERIDIAN OF SCOTLAND, ETC., TO WHICH IS ADDED THE

CONTEMPLATIVE AND PRACTICAL ANGLER. In this book the furious Franck

first pays Walton the flattery of imitation, and then further adorns

him with abuse, calling THE COMPLEAT ANGLER "an indigested octavo,

stuffed with morals from Dubravius and others," and more than

hinting that the father of anglers knew little or nothing of "his

uncultivated art." Walton was a Churchman and a Loyalist, you see,

while Franck was a Commonwealth man and an Independent.

The second detractor of Walton was Lord Byron, who wrote

 "The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet

  Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it."

But Byron is certainly a poor authority on the quality of mercy.

His contempt need not cause an honest man overwhelming distress. I

should call it a complimentary dislike.

The third author who expressed unpleasant sentiments in regard to

Walton was Leigh Hunt. Here, again, I fancy that partizan prejudice

had something to do with the dislike. Hunt was a radical in

politics and religion. Moreover there was a feline strain in his

character, which made it necessary for him to scratch somebody now

and then, as a relief to his feelings.

Walton was a great quoter. His book is not "stuffed," as Franck

jealously alleged, but it is certainly well sauced with piquant

references to other writers, as early as the author of the Book of

Job, and as late as John Dennys, who betrayed to the world THE

SECRETS OF ANGLING in 1613. Walton further seasoned his book with

fragments of information about fish and fishing, more or less

apocryphal, gathered from Aelian, Pliny, Plutarch, Sir Francis

Bacon, Dubravius, Gesner, Rondeletius, the learned Aldrovandus, the

venerable Bede, the divine Du Bartas, and many others. He borrowed

freely for the adornment of his discourse, and did not scorn to make

use of what may he called LIVE QUOTATIONS,--that is to say, the

unpublished remarks of his near contemporaries, caught in friendly

conversation, or handed down by oral tradition.

But these various seasonings did not disguise, they only enhanced,

the delicate flavour of the dish which he served up to his readers.

This was all of his own taking, and of a sweetness quite

incomparable.

I like a writer who is original enough to water his garden with

quotations, without fear of being drowned out. Such men are Charles

Lamb and James Russell Lowell and John Burroughs.

Walton's book is as fresh as a handful of wild violets and sweet

lavender. It breathes the odours of the green fields and the woods.

It tastes of simple, homely, appetizing things like the "syllabub of

new verjuice in a new-made haycock" which the milkwoman promised to

give Piscator the next time he came that way. Its music plays the

tune of A CONTENTED HEART over and over again without dulness, and

charms us into harmony with

 "A noise like the sound of a hidden brook

  In the leafy month of June,

  That to the sleeping woods all night

  Singeth a quiet tune."

Walton has been quoted even more than any of the writers whom he

quotes. It would be difficult, even if it were not ungrateful, to

write about angling without referring to him. Some pretty saying,

some wise reflection from his pages, suggests itself at almost every

turn of the subject.

And yet his book, though it be the best, is not the only readable

one that his favourite recreation has begotten. The literature of

angling is extensive, as any one may see who will look at the list

of the collection presented by Mr. John Bartlett to Harvard

University, or study the catalogue of the piscatorial library of Mr.

Dean Sage, of Albany, who himself has contributed an admirable book

on THE RISTIGOUCHE.

Nor is this literature altogether composed of dry and technical

treatises, interesting only to the confirmed anglimaniac, or to the

young novice ardent in pursuit of practical information. There is a

good deal of juicy reading in it.

Books about angling should be divided (according to De Quincey's

method) into two classes,--the literature of knowledge, and the

literature of power.

The first class contains the handbooks on rods and tackle, the

directions how to angle for different kinds of fish, and the guides

to various fishing-resorts. The weakness of these books is that

they soon fall out of date, as the manufacture of tackle is

improved, the art of angling refined, and the fish in once-famous

waters are educated or exterminated.

Alas, how transient is the fashion of this world, even in angling!

The old manuals with their precise instruction for trimming and

painting trout-rods eighteen feet long, and their painful

description of "oyntments" made of nettle-juice, fish-hawk oil,

camphor, cat's fat, or assafoedita, (supposed to allure the fish,)

are altogether behind the age. Many of the flies described by

Charles Cotton and Thomas Barker seem to have gone out of style

among the trout. Perhaps familiarity has bred contempt. Generation

after generation of fish have seen these same old feathered

confections floating on the water, and learned by sharp experience

that they do not taste good. The blase trout demand something new,

something modern. It is for this reason, I suppose, that an

altogether original fly, unheard of, startling, will often do great

execution in an over-fished pool.

Certain it is that the art of angling, in settled regions, is

growing more dainty and difficult. You must cast a longer, lighter

line; you must use finer leaders; you must have your flies dressed

on smaller hooks.

And another thing is certain: in many places (described in the

ancient volumes) where fish were once abundant, they are now like

the shipwrecked sailors in Vergil his Aeneid,--

 "rari nantes in gurgite vasto."

The floods themselves are also disappearing. Mr. Edmund Clarence

Stedman was telling me, the other day, of the trout-brook that used

to run through the Connecticut village when he nourished a poet's

youth. He went back to visit the stream a few years since, and it

was gone, literally vanished from the face of earth, stolen to make

a watersupply for the town, and used for such base purposes as the

washing of clothes and the sprinkling of streets.

I remember an expedition with my father, some twenty years ago, to

Nova Scotia, whither we set out to realize the hopes kindled by an

ANGLER'S GUIDE written in the early sixties. It was like looking

for tall clocks in the farmhouses around Boston. The harvest had

been well gleaned before our arrival, and in the very place where

our visionary author located his most famous catch we found a summer

hotel and a sawmill.

'T is strange and sad, how many regions there are where "the fishing

was wonderful forty years ago"!

The second class of angling books--the literature of power--includes

all (even those written with some purpose of instruction) in which

the gentle fascinations of the sport, the attractions of living out-

of-doors, the beauties of stream and woodland, the recollections of

happy adventure, and the cheerful thoughts that make the best of a

day's luck, come clearly before the author's mind and find some fit

expression in his words. Of such books, thank Heaven, there is a

plenty to bring a Maytide charm and cheer into the fisherman's dull

December. I will name, by way of random tribute from a grateful but

unmethodical memory, a few of these consolatory volumes.

First of all comes a family of books that were born in Scotland and

smell of the heather.

Whatever a Scotchman's conscience permits him to do, is likely to be

done with vigour and a fiery mind. In trade and in theology, in

fishing and in fighting, he is all there and thoroughly kindled.

There is an old-fashioned book called THE MOOR AND THE LOCH, by John

Colquhoun, which is full of contagious enthusiasm. Thomas Tod

Stoddart was a most impassioned angler, (though over-given to strong

language,) and in his ANGLING REMINISCENCES he has touched the

subject with a happy hand,--happiest when he breaks into poetry and

tosses out a song for the fisherman. Professor John Wilson of the

University of Edinburgh held the chair of Moral Philosophy in that

institution, but his true fame rests on his well-earned titles of A.

M. and F. R. S.,--Master of Angling, and Fisherman Royal of

Scotland. His RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, albeit their humour

is sometimes too boisterously hammered in, are genial and generous

essays, overflowing with passages of good-fellowship and pedestrian

fancy. I would recommend any person in a dry and melancholy state

of mind to read his paper on "Streams," in the first volume of

ESSAYS CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. But it must be said, by way of

warning to those with whom dryness is a matter of principle, that

all Scotch fishing-books are likely to be sprinkled with Highland

Dew.

Among English anglers, Sir Humphry Davy is one of whom Christopher

North speaks rather slightingly. Nevertheless his SALMONIA is well

worth reading, not only because it was written by a learned man, but

because it exhales the spirit of cheerful piety and vital wisdom.

Charles Kingsley was another great man who wrote well about angling.

His CHALK-STREAM STUDIES are clear and sparkling. They cleanse the

mind and refresh the heart and put us more in love with living. Of

quite a different style are the MAXIMS AND HINTS FOR AN ANGLER, AND

MISERIES OF FISHING, which were written by Richard Penn, a grandson

of the founder of Pennsylvania. This is a curious and rare little

volume, professing to be a compilation from the "Common Place Book

of the Houghton Fishing Club," and dealing with the subject from a

Pickwickian point of view. I suppose that William Penn would have

thought his grandson a frivolous writer.

But he could not have entertained such an opinion of the Honourable

Robert Boyle, of whose OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS no less than twelve

discourses treat "of Angling Improved to Spiritual Uses." The

titles of some of these discourses are quaint enough to quote.

"Upon the being called upon to rise early on a very fair morning."

"Upon the mounting, singing, and lighting of larks." "Upon fishing

with a counterfeit fly." "Upon a danger arising from an

unseasonable contest with the steersman." "Upon one's drinking

water out of the brim of his hat." With such good texts it is easy

to endure, and easier still to spare, the sermons.

Englishmen carry their love of travel into their anglimania, and

many of their books describe fishing adventures in foreign parts.

RAMBLES WITH A FISHING-ROD, by E. S. Roscoe, tells of happy days in

the Salzkammergut and the Bavarian Highlands and Normandy. FISH-

TAILS AND A FEW OTHERS, by Bradnock Hall, contains some delightful

chapters on Norway. THE ROD IN INDIA, by H. S. Thomas, narrates

wonderful adventures with the Mahseer and the Rohu and other pagan

fish.

But, after all, I like the English angler best when he travels at

home, and writes of dry-fly fishing in the Itchen or the Test, or of

wet-fly fishing in Northumberland or Sutherlandshire. There is a

fascinating booklet that appeared quietly, some years ago, called AN

AMATEUR ANGLER'S DAYS IN DOVE DALE. It runs as easily and merrily

and kindly as a little river, full of peace and pure enjoyment.

Other books of the same quality have since been written by the same

pen,--DAYS IN CLOVER, FRESH WOODS, BY MEADOW AND STREAM. It is no

secret, I believe, that the author is Mr. Edward Marston, the senior

member of a London publishing-house. But he still clings to his

retiring pen-name of "The Amateur Angler," and represents himself,

by a graceful fiction, as all unskilled in the art. An instance of

similar modesty is found in Mr. Andrew Lang, who entitles the first

chapter of his delightful ANGLING SKETCHES (without which no

fisherman's library is complete), "Confessions of a Duffer." This

an engaging liberty which no one else would dare to take.

The best English fish-story pure and simple, that I know, is

"Crocker's Hole," by H. D. Black-more, the creator of LORNA DOONE.

Let us turn now to American books about angling. Of these the

merciful dispensations of Providence have brought forth no small

store since Mr. William Andrew Chatto made the ill-natured remark

which is pilloried at the head of this chapter. By the way, it

seems that Mr. Chatto had never heard of "The Schuylkill Fishing

Company," which was founded on that romantic stream near

Philadelphia in 1732, nor seen the AUTHENTIC HISTORICAL MEMOIR of

that celebrated and amusing society.

I am sorry for the man who cannot find pleasure in reading the

appendix of THE AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK, by Thaddeus Norris; or the

discursive pages of Frank Forester's FISH AND FISHING; or the

introduction and notes of that unexcelled edition of Walton which

was made by the Reverend Doctor George W. Bethune; or SUPERIOR

FISHING and GAME FISH OF THE NORTH, by Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt; or

Henshall's BOOK OF THE BLACK BASS; or the admirable disgressions of

Mr. Henry P. Wells, in his FLY-RODS AND FLY-TACKLE, and THE AMERICAN

SALMON ANGLER. Dr. William C. Prime has never put his profound

knowledge of the art of angling into a manual of technical

instruction; but he has written of the delights of the sport in OWL

CREEK LETTERS, and in I GO A-FISHING, and in some of the chapters of

ALONG NEW ENGLAND ROADS and AMONG NEW ENGLAND HILLS, with a

persuasive skill that has created many new anglers, and made many

old ones grateful. It is a fitting coincidence of heredity that his

niece, Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, is the author of the most tender

and pathetic of all angling stories, FISHIN' JIMMY.

But it is not only in books written altogether from his peculiar

point of view and to humour his harmless insanity, that the angler

may find pleasant reading about his favourite pastime. There are

excellent bits of fishing scattered all through the field of good

literature. It seems as if almost all the men who could write well

had a friendly feeling for the contemplative sport.

Plutarch, in THE LIVES OF THE NOBLE GRECIANS AND ROMANS, tells a

capital fish-story of the manner in which the Egyptian Cleopatra

fooled that far-famed Roman wight, Marc Antony, when they were

angling together on the Nile. As I recall it, from a perusal in

early boyhood, Antony was having very bad luck indeed; in fact he

had taken nothing, and was sadly put out about it. Cleopatra,

thinking to get a rise out of him, secretly told one of her

attendants to dive over the opposite side of the barge and fasten a

salt fish to the Roman general's hook. The attendant was much

pleased with this commission, and, having executed it, proceeded to

add a fine stroke of his own; for when he had made the fish fast on

the hook, he gave a great pull to the line and held on tightly.

Antony was much excited and began to haul violently at his tackle.

"By Jupiter!" he exclaimed, "it was long in coming, but I have a

colossal bite now."

"Have a care," said Cleopatra, laughing behind her sunshade, "or he

will drag you into the water. You must give him line when he pulls

hard."

"Not a denarius will I give!" rudely responded Antony. "I mean to

have this halibut or Hades!"

At this moment the man under the boat, being out of breath, let the

line go, and Antony, falling backward, drew up the salted herring.

"Take that fish off the hook, Palinurus," he proudly said. "It is

not as large as I thought, but it looks like the oldest one that has

been caught to-day."

Such, in effect, is the tale narrated by the veracious Plutarch.

And if any careful critic wishes to verify my quotation from memory,

he may compare it with the proper page of Langhorne's translation; I

think it is in the second volume, near the end.

Sir Walter Scott, who once described himself as

 "No fisher,

  But a well-wisher

  To the game,"

has an amusing passage of angling in the third chapter of

REDGAUNTLET. Darsie Latimer is relating his adventures in

Dumfriesshire. "By the way," says he, "old Cotton's instructions,

by which I hoped to qualify myself for the gentle society of

anglers, are not worth a farthing for this meridian. I learned this

by mere accident, after I had waited four mortal hours. I shall

never forget an impudent urchin, a cowherd, about twelve years old,

without either brogue or bonnet, barelegged, with a very indifferent

pair of breeches,--how the villain grinned in scorn at my landing-

net, my plummet, and the gorgeous jury of flies which I had

assembled to destroy all the fish in the river. I was induced at

last to lend the rod to the sneering scoundrel, to see what he would

make of it; and he not only half-filled my basket in an hour, but

literally taught me to kill two trouts with my own hand."

Thus ancient and well-authenticated is the superstition of the

angling powers of the barefooted country-boy,--in fiction.

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, in that valuable but over-capitalized

book, MY NOVEL, makes use of Fishing for Allegorical Purposes. The

episode of John Burley and the One-eyed Perch not only points a

Moral but adorns the Tale.

In the works of R. D. Blackmore, angling plays a less instructive

but a pleasanter part. It is closely interwoven with love. There

is a magical description of trout-fishing on a meadow-brook in ALICE

LORRAINE. And who that has read LORNA DOONE, (pity for the man or

woman that knows not the delight of that book!) can ever forget how

young John Ridd dared his way up the gliddery water-slide, after

loaches, and found Lorna in a fair green meadow adorned with

flowers, at the top of the brook?

I made a little journey into the Doone Country once, just to see

that brook and to fish in it. The stream looked smaller, and the

water-slide less terrible, than they seemed in the book. But it was

a mighty pretty place after all; and I suppose that even John Ridd,

when he came back to it in after years, found it shrunken a little.

All the streams were larger in our boyhood than they are now,

except, perhaps, that which flows from the sweetest spring of all,

the fountain of love, which John Ridd discovered beside the

Bagworthy River,--and I, on the willow-shaded banks of the Patapsco,

where the Baltimore girls fish for gudgeons,--and you? Come, gentle

reader, is there no stream whose name is musical to you, because of

a hidden spring of love that you once found on its shore? The

waters of that fountain never fail, and in them alone we taste the

undiminished fulness of immortal youth.

The stories of William Black are enlivened with fish, and he knew,

better than most men, how they should be taken. Whenever he wanted

to get two young people engaged to each other, all other devices

failing, he sent them out to angle together. If it had not been for

fishing, everything in A PRINCESS OF THULE and WHITE HEATHER would

have gone wrong.

But even men who have been disappointed in love may angle for solace

or diversion. I have known some old bachelors who fished

excellently well; and others I have known who could find, and give,

much pleasure in a day on the stream, though they had no skill in

the sport. Of this class was Washington Irving, with an extract

from whose SKETCH BOOK I will bring this rambling dissertation to an

end.

"Our first essay," says he, was along a mountain brook among the

highlands of the Hudson; a most unfortunate place for the execution

of those piscatory tactics which had been invented along the velvet

margins of quiet English rivulets. It was one of those wild streams

that lavish, among our romantic solitudes, unheeded beauties enough

to fill the sketch-book of a hunter of the picturesque. Sometimes

it would leap down rocky shelves, making small cascades, over which

the trees threw their broad balancing sprays, and long nameless

weeds hung in fringes from the impending banks, dripping with

diamond drops. Sometimes it would brawl and fret along a ravine in

the matted shade of a forest, filling it with murmurs; and, after

this termagant career, would steal forth into open day, with the

most placid, demure face imaginable; as I have seen some pestilent

shrew of a housewife, after filling her home with uproar and ill-

humour, come dimpling out of doors, swimming and courtesying, and

smiling upon all the world.

"How smoothly would this vagrant brook glide, at such times, through

some bosom of green meadow-land among the mountains, where the quiet

was only interrupted by the occasional tinkling of a bell from the

lazy cattle among the clover, or the sound of a woodcutter's axe

from the neighbouring forest!

"For my part, I was always a bungler at all kinds of sport that

required either patience or adroitness, and had not angled above

half an hour before I had completely 'satisfied the sentiment,' and

convinced myself of the truth of Izaak Walton's opinion, that

angling is something like poetry,--a man must be born to it. I

hooked myself instead of the fish; tangled my line in every tree;

lost my bait; broke my rod; until I gave up the attempt in despair,

and passed the day under the trees, reading old Izaak, satisfied

that it was his fascinating vein of honest simplicity and rural

feeling that had bewitched me, and not the passion for angling."

A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON

"The best rose-bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest

thorns, but that which bears the finest roses."--SOLOMON SINGLEWITZ:

The Life of Adam.

I

It was not all unadulterated sweetness, of course. There were

enough difficulties in the way to make it seem desirable; and a few

stings of annoyance, now and then, lent piquancy to the adventure.

But a good memory, in dealing with the past, has the art of

straining out all the beeswax of discomfort, and storing up little

jars of pure hydromel. As we look back at our six weeks in Norway,

we agree that no period of our partnership in experimental

honeymooning has yielded more honey to the same amount of comb.

Several considerations led us to the resolve of taking our honeymoon

experimentally rather than chronologically. We started from the

self-evident proposition that it ought to be the happiest time in

married life.

"It is perfectly ridiculous," said my lady Graygown, "to suppose

that a thing like that can be fixed by the calendar. It may

possibly fall in the first month after the wedding, but it is not

likely. Just think how slightly two people know each other when

they get married. They are in love, of course, but that is not at

all the same as being well acquainted. Sometimes the more love, the

less acquaintance! And sometimes the more acquaintance, the less

love! Besides, at first there are always the notes of thanks for

the wedding-presents to be written, and the letters of

congratulation to be answered, and it is awfully hard to make each

one sound a little different from the others and perfectly natural.

Then, you know, everybody seems to suspect you of the folly of being

newly married. You run across your friends everywhere, and they

grin when they see you. You can't help feeling as if a lot of

people were watching you through opera-glasses, or taking snap-shots

at you with a kodak. It is absurd to imagine that the first month

must be the real honeymoon. And just suppose it were,--what bad

luck that would be! What would there be to look forward to?"

Every word that fell from her lips seemed to me like the wisdom of

Diotima.

"You are right," I cried; "Portia could not hold a candle to you for

clear argument. Besides, suppose two people are imprudent enough to

get married in the first week of December, as we did!--what becomes

of the chronological honeymoon then? There is no fishing in

December, and all the rivers of Paradise, at least in our latitude,

are frozen up. No, my lady, we will discover our month of honey by

the empirical method. Each year we will set out together to seek it

in a solitude for two; and we will compare notes on moons, and

strike the final balance when we are sure that our happiest

experiment has been completed."

We are not sure of that, even yet. We are still engaged, as a

committee of two, in our philosophical investigation, and we decline

to make anything but a report of progress. We know more now than we

did when we first went honeymooning in the city of Washington. For

one thing, we are certain that not even the far-famed rosemary-

fields of Narbonne, or the fragrant hillsides of the Corbieres,

yield a sweeter harvest to the busy-ness of the bees than the

Norwegian meadows and mountain-slopes yielded to our idleness in the

summer of 1888.

II

The rural landscape of Norway, on the long easterly slope that leads

up to the watershed among the mountains of the western coast, is not

unlike that of Vermont or New Hampshire. The railway from

Christiania to the Randsfjord carried us through a hilly country of

scattered farms and villages. Wood played a prominent part in the

scenery. There were dark stretches of forest on the hilltops and in

the valleys; rivers filled with floating logs; sawmills beside the

waterfalls; wooden farmhouses painted white; and rail-fences around

the fields. The people seemed sturdy, prosperous, independent.

They had the familiar habit of coming down to the station to see the

train arrive and depart. We might have fancied ourselves on a

journey through the Connecticut valley, if it had not been for the

soft sing-song of the Norwegian speech and the uniform politeness of

the railway officials.

What a room that was in the inn at Randsfjord where we spent our

first night out! Vast, bare, primitive, with eight windows to admit

the persistent nocturnal twilight; a sea-like floor of blue-painted

boards, unbroken by a single island of carpet; and a castellated

stove in one corner: an apartment for giants, with two little beds

for dwarfs on opposite shores of the ocean. There was no telephone;

so we arranged a system of communication with a fishing-line, to

make sure that the sleepy partner should be awake in time for the

early boat in the morning.

The journey up the lake took seven hours, and reminded us of a

voyage on Lake George; placid, picturesque, and pervaded by summer

boarders. Somewhere on the way we had lunch, and were well

fortified to take the road when the steamboat landed us at Odnaes,

at the head of the lake, about two o'clock in the afternoon.

There are several methods in which you may drive through Norway.

The government maintains posting-stations at the farms along the

main travelled highways, where you can hire horses and carriages of

various kinds. There are also English tourist agencies which make a

business of providing travellers with complete transportation. You

may try either of these methods alone, or you may make a judicious

mixture.

Thus, by an application of the theory of permutations and

combinations, you have your choice among four ways of accomplishing

a driving-tour. First, you may engage a carriage and pair, with a

driver, from one of the tourist agencies, and roll through your

journey in sedentary case, provided your horses do not go lame or

give out. Second, you may rely altogether upon the posting-stations

to send you on your journey; and this is a very pleasant, lively

way, provided there is not a crowd of travellers on the road before

you, who take up all the comfortable conveyances and leave you

nothing but a jolting cart or a ramshackle KARIOL of the time of St.

Olaf. Third, you may rent an easy-riding vehicle (by choice a well-

hung gig) for the entire trip, and change ponies at the stations as

you drive along; this is the safest way. The fourth method is to

hire your horseflesh at the beginning for the whole journey, and

pick up your vehicles from place to place. This method is

theoretically possible, but I do not know any one who has tried it.

Our gig was waiting for us at Odnaes. There was a brisk little

mouse-coloured pony in the shafts; and it took but a moment to strap

our leather portmanteau on the board at the back, perch the postboy

on top of it, and set out for our first experience of a Norwegian

driving-tour.

The road at first was level and easy; and we bowled along smoothly

through the valley of the Etnaelv, among drooping birch-trees and

green fields where the larks were singing. At Tomlevolden, ten

miles farther on, we reached the first station, a comfortable old

farmhouse, with a great array of wooden outbuildings. Here we had a

chance to try our luck with the Norwegian language in demanding "en

hest, saa straxt som muligt." This was what the guide-book told us

to say when we wanted a horse.

There is great fun in making a random cast on the surface of a

strange language. You cannot tell what will come up. It is like an

experiment in witchcraft. We should not have been at all surprised,

I must confess, if our preliminary incantation had brought forth a

cow or a basket of eggs.

But the good people seemed to divine our intentions; and while we

were waiting for one of the stable-boys to catch and harness the new

horse, a yellow-haired maiden inquired, in very fair English, if we

would not be pleased to have a cup of tea and some butter-bread;

which we did with great comfort.

The SKYDSGUT, or so-called postboy, for the next stage of the

journey, was a full-grown man of considerable weight. As he climbed

to his perch on our portmanteau, my lady Graygown congratulated me

on the prudence which had provided that one side of that receptacle

should be of an inflexible stiffness, quite incapable of being

crushed; otherwise, asked she, what would have become of her Sunday

frock under the pressure of this stern necessity of a postboy?

But I think we should not have cared very much if all our luggage

had been smashed on this journey, for the road now began to ascend,

and the views over the Etnadal, with its winding river, were of a

breadth and sweetness most consoling. Up and up we went, curving in

and out through the forest, crossing wild ravines and shadowy dells,

looking back at every turn on the wide landscape bathed in golden

light. At the station of Sveen, where we changed horse and postboy

again, it was already evening. The sun was down, but the mystical

radiance of the northern twilight illumined the sky. The dark fir-

woods spread around us, and their odourous breath was diffused

through the cool, still air. We were crossing the level summit of

the plateau, twenty-three hundred feet above the sea. Two tiny

woodland lakes gleamed out among the trees. Then the road began to

slope gently towards the west, and emerged suddenly on the edge of

the forest, looking out over the long, lovely vale of Valders, with

snow-touched mountains on the horizon, and the river Baegna

shimmering along its bed, a thousand feet below us.

What a heart-enlarging outlook! What a keen joy of motion, as the

wheels rolled down the long incline, and the sure-footed pony swung

between the shafts and rattled his hoofs merrily on the hard road!

What long, deep breaths of silent pleasure in the crisp night air!

What wondrous mingling of lights in the afterglow of sunset, and the

primrose bloom of the first stars, and faint foregleamings of the

rising moon creeping over the hill behind us! What perfection of

companionship without words, as we rode together through a strange

land, along the edge of the dark!

When we finished the thirty-fifth mile, and drew up in the courtyard

of the station at Frydenlund, Graygown sprang out, with a little

sigh of regret.

"Is it last night," she cried, "or to-morrow morning? I have n't

the least idea what time it is; it seems as if we had been

travelling in eternity."

"It is just ten o'clock," I answered, "and the landlord says there

will be a hot supper of trout ready for us in five minutes."

It would be vain to attempt to give a daily record of the whole

journey in which we made this fair beginning. It was a most idle

and unsystematic pilgrimage. We wandered up and down, and turned

aside when fancy beckoned. Sometimes we hurried on as fast as the

horses would carry us, driving sixty or seventy miles a day;

sometimes we loitered and dawdled, as if we did not care whether we

got anywhere or not. If a place pleased us, we stayed and tried the

fishing. If we were tired of driving, we took to the water, and

travelled by steamer along a fjord, or hired a rowboat to cross from

point to point. One day we would be in a good little hotel, with

polyglot guests, and serving-maids in stagey Norse costumes,--like

the famous inn at Stalheim, which commands the amazing panorama of

the Naerodal. Another day we would lodge in a plain farmhouse like

the station at Nedre Vasenden, where eggs and fish were the staples

of diet, and the farmer's daughter wore the picturesque peasants'

dress, with its tall cap, without any dramatic airs. Lakes and

rivers, precipices and gorges, waterfalls and glaciers and snowy

mountains were our daily repast. We drove over five hundred miles

in various kinds of open wagons, KARIOLS for one, and STOLKJAERRES

for two, after we had left our comfortable gig behind us. We saw

the ancient dragon-gabled church of Burgund; and the delightful,

showery town of Bergen; and the gloomy cliffs of the Geiranger-Fjord

laced with filmy cataracts; and the bewitched crags of the Romsdal;

and the wide, desolate landscape of Jerkin; and a hundred other

unforgotten scenes. Somehow or other we went, (around and about,

and up and down, now on wheels, and now on foot, and now in a boat,)

all the way from Christiania to Throndhjem. My lady Graygown could

give you the exact itinerary, for she has been well brought up, and

always keeps a diary. All I know is, that we set out from one city

and arrived at the other, and we gathered by the way a collection of

instantaneous photographs. I am going to turn them over now, and

pick out a few of the clearest pictures.

III

Here is the bridge over the Naeselv at Fagernaes. Just below it is

a good pool for trout, but the river is broad and deep and swift.

It is difficult wading to get out within reach of the fish. I have

taken half a dozen small ones and come to the end of my cast. There

is a big one lying out in the middle of the river, I am sure. But

the water already rises to my hips; another step will bring it over

the top of my waders, and send me downstream feet uppermost.

"Take care!" cries Graygown from the grassy bank, where she sits

placidly crocheting some mysterious fabric of white yarn.

She does not see the large rock lying at the bottom of the river

just beyond me. If I can step on that, and stand there without

being swept away, I can reach the mid-current with my flies. It is

a long stride and a slippery foothold, but by good luck "the last

step which costs" is accomplished. The tiny black and orange hackle

goes curling out over the stream, lights softly, and swings around

with the current, folding and expanding its feathers as if it were

alive. The big trout takes it promptly the instant it passes over

him; and I play him and net him without moving from my perilous

perch.

Graygown waves her crochet-work like a flag, "Bravo!" she cries.

"That's a beauty, nearly two pounds! But do be careful about coming

back; you are not good enough to take any risks yet."

The station at Skogstad is a solitary farmhouse lying far up on the

bare hillside, with its barns and out-buildings grouped around a

central courtyard, like a rude fortress. The river travels along

the valley below, now wrestling its way through a narrow passage

among the rocks, now spreading out at leisure in a green meadow. As

we cross the bridge, the crystal water is changed to opal by the

sunset glow, and a gentle breeze ruffles the long pools, and the

trout are rising freely. It is the perfect hour for fishing. Would

Graygown dare to drive on alone to the gate of the fortress, and

blow upon the long horn which doubtless hangs beside it, and demand

admittance and a lodging, "in the name of the great Jehovah and the

Continental Congress,"--while I angle down the river a mile or so?

Certainly she would. What door is there in Europe at which the

American girl is afraid to knock? "But wait a moment. How do you

ask for fried chicken and pancakes in Norwegian? KYLLING OG

PANDEKAGE? How fierce it sounds! All right now. Run along and

fish."

The river welcomes me like an old friend. The tune that it sings is

the same that the flowing water repeats all around the world. Not

otherwise do the lively rapids carry the familiar air, and the

larger falls drone out a burly bass, along the west branch of the

Penobscot, or down the valley of the Bouquet. But here there are no

forests to conceal the course of the stream. It lies as free to the

view as a child's thought. As I follow on from pool to pool,

picking out a good trout here and there, now from a rocky corner

edged with foam, now from a swift gravelly run, now from a snug

hiding-place that the current has hollowed out beneath the bank, all

the way I can see the fortress far above me on the hillside.

I am as sure that it has already surrendered to Graygown as if I

could discern her white banner of crochet-work floating from the

battlements.

Just before dark, I climb the hill with a heavy basket of fish. The

castle gate is open. The scent of chicken and pancakes salutes the

weary pilgrim. In a cosy little parlour, adorned with fluffy mats

and pictures framed in pine-cones, lit by a hanging lamp with glass

pendants, sits the mistress of the occasion, calmly triumphant and

plying her crochet-needle.

There is something mysterious about a woman's fancy-work. It seems

to have all the soothing charm of the tobacco-plant, without its

inconveniences. Just to see her tranquillity, while she relaxes her

mind and busies her fingers with a bit of tatting or embroidery or

crochet, gives me a sense of being domesticated, a "homey" feeling,

anywhere in the wide world.

If you ever go to Norway, you must be sure to see the Loenvand. You

can set out from the comfortable hotel at Faleide, go up the Indvik

Fjord in a rowboat, cross over a two-mile hill on foot or by

carriage, spend a happy day on the lake, and return to your inn in

time for a late supper. The lake is perhaps the most beautiful in

Norway. Long and narrow, it lies like a priceless emerald of palest

green, hidden and guarded by jealous mountains. It is fed by huge

glaciers, which hang over the shoulders of the hills like ragged

cloaks of ice.

As we row along the shore, trolling in vain for the trout that live

in the ice-cold water, fragments of the tattered cloth-of-silver far

above us, on the opposite side, are loosened by the touch of the

summer sun, and fall from the precipice. They drift downward, at

first, as noiselessly as thistledowns; then they strike the rocks

and come crashing towards the lake with the hollow roar of an

avalanche.

At the head of the lake we find ourselves in an enormous

amphitheatre of mountains. Glaciers are peering down upon us.

Snow-fields glare at us with glistening eyes. Black crags seem to

bend above us with an eternal frown. Streamers of foam float from

the forehead of the hills and the lips of the dark ravines. But

there is a little river of cold, pure water flowing from one of the

rivers of ice, and a pleasant shelter of young trees and bushes

growing among the debris of shattered rocks; and there we build our

camp-fire and eat our lunch.

Hunger is a most impudent appetite. It makes a man forget all the

proprieties. What place is there so lofty, so awful, that he will

not dare to sit down in it and partake of food? Even on the side of

Mount Sinai, the elders of Israel spread their out-of-door table,

"and did eat and drink."

I see the Tarn of the Elk at this moment, just as it looked in the

clear sunlight of that August afternoon, ten years ago. Far down in

a hollow of the desolate hills it nestles, four thousand feet above

the sea. The moorland trail hangs high above it, and, though it is

a mile away, every curve of the treeless shore, every shoal and reef

in the light green water is clearly visible. With a powerful field-

glass one can almost see the large trout for which the pond is

famous.

The shelter-hut on the bank is built of rough gray stones, and the

roof is leaky to the light as well as to the weather. But there are

two beds in it, one for my guide and one for me; and a practicable

fireplace, which is soon filled with a blaze of comfort. There is

also a random library of novels, which former fishermen have

thoughtfully left behind them. I like strong reading in the

wilderness. Give me a story with plenty of danger and wholesome

fighting in it,--"The Three Musketeers," or "Treasure Island," or

"The Afghan's Knife." Intricate studies of social dilemmas and

tales of mild philandering seem bloodless and insipid.

The trout in the Tarn of the Elk are large, undoubtedly, but they

are also few in number and shy in disposition. Either some of the

peasants have been fishing over them with the deadly "otter," or

else they belong to that variety of the trout family known as TRUTTA

DAMNOSA,--the species which you can see but cannot take. We watched

these aggravating fish playing on the surface at sunset; we saw them

dart beneath our boat in the early morning; but not until a driving

snowstorm set in, about noon of the second day, did we succeed in

persuading any of them to take the fly. Then they rose, for a

couple of hours, with amiable perversity. I caught five, weighing

between two and four pounds each, and stopped because my hands were

so numb that I could cast no longer.

Now for a long tramp over the hills and home. Yes, home; for yonder

in the white house at Drivstuen, with fuchsias and geraniums

blooming in the windows, and a pretty, friendly Norse girl to keep

her company, my lady is waiting for me. See, she comes running out

to the door, in the gathering dusk, with a red flower in her hair,

and hails me with the fisherman's greeting. WHAT LUCK?

Well, THIS luck, at all events! I can show you a few good fish, and

sit down with you to a supper of reindeer-venison and a quiet

evening of music and talk.

Shall I forget thee, hospitable Stuefloten, dearest to our memory of

all the rustic stations in Norway? There are no stars beside thy

name in the pages of Baedeker. But in the book of our hearts a

whole constellation is thine.

The long, low, white farmhouse stands on a green hill at the head of

the Romsdal. A flourishing crop of grass and flowers grows on the

stable-roof, and there is a little belfry with a big bell to call

the labourers home from the fields. In the corner of the living-

room of the old house there is a broad fireplace built across the

angle. Curious cupboards are tucked away everywhere. The long

table in the dining-room groans thrice a day with generous fare.

There are as many kinds of hot bread as in a Virginia country-house;

the cream is thick enough to make a spoon stand up in amazement;

once, at dinner, we sat embarrassed before six different varieties

of pudding.

In the evening, when the saffron light is beginning to fade, we go

out and walk in the road before the house, looking down the long

mystical vale of the Rauma, or up to the purple western hills from

which the clear streams of the Ulvaa flow to meet us.

Above Stuefloten the Rauma lingers and meanders through a smoother

and more open valley, with broad beds of gravel and flowery meadows.

Here the trout and grayling grow fat and lusty, and here we angle

for them, day after day, in water so crystalline that when one steps

into the stream one hardly knows whether to expect a depth of six

inches or six feet.

Tiny English flies and leaders of gossamer are the tackle for such

water in midsummer. With this delicate outfit, and with a light

hand and a long line, one may easily outfish the native angler, and

fill a twelve-pound basket every fair day. I remember an old

Norwegian, an inveterate fisherman, whose footmarks we saw ahead of

us on the stream all through an afternoon. Footmarks I call them;

and so they were, literally, for there were only the prints of a

single foot to be seen on the banks of sand, and between them, a

series of small, round, deep holes.

"What kind of a bird made those marks, Frederik?" I asked my

faithful guide.

"That is old Pedersen," he said, "with his wooden leg. He makes a

dot after every step. We shall catch him in a little while."

Sure enough, about six o'clock we saw him standing on a grassy

point, hurling his line, with a fat worm on the end of it, far

across the stream, and letting it drift down with the current. But

the water was too fine for that style of fishing, and the poor old

fellow had but a half dozen little fish. My creel was already

overflowing, so I emptied out all of the grayling into his bag, and

went on up the river to complete my tale of trout before dark.

And when the fishing is over, there is Graygown with the wagon,

waiting at the appointed place under the trees, beside the road.

The sturdy white pony trots gayly homeward. The pale yellow stars

blossom out above the hills again, as they did on that first night

when we were driving down into the Valders. Frederik leans over the

back of the seat, telling us marvellous tales, in his broken

English, of the fishing in a certain lake among the mountains, and

of the reindeer-shooting on the fjeld beyond it.

"It is sad that you go to-morrow," says he "but you come back

another year, I think, to fish in that lake, and to shoot those

reindeer."

Yes, Frederik, we are coming back to Norway some day, perhaps,--who

can tell? It is one of the hundred places that we are vaguely

planning to revisit. For, though we did not see the midnight sun

there, we saw the honeymoon most distinctly. And it was bright

enough to take pictures by its light.

WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS?

"My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately

the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall

become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take

from all their beauty and enjoy their glory."--RICHARD JEFFERIES:

The Life of the Fields.

It was the little lad that asked the question; and the answer also,

as you will see, was mainly his.

We had been keeping Sunday afternoon together in our favourite

fashion, following out that pleasant text which tells us to "behold

the fowls of the air." There is no injunction of Holy Writ less

burdensome in acceptance, or more profitable in obedience, than this

easy out-of-doors commandment. For several hours we walked in the

way of this precept, through the untangled woods that lie behind the

Forest Hills Lodge, where a pair of pigeon-hawks had their nest; and

around the brambly shores of the small pond, where Maryland yellow-

throats and song-sparrows were settled; and under the lofty hemlocks

of the fragment of forest across the road, where rare warblers

flitted silently among the tree-tops. The light beneath the

evergreens was growing dim as we came out from their shadow into the

widespread glow of the sunset, on the edge of a grassy hill,

overlooking the long valley of the Gale River, and uplooking to the

Franconia Mountains.

It was the benediction hour. The placid air of the day shed a new

tranquillity over the consoling landscape. The heart of the earth

seemed to taste a repose more perfect than that of common days. A

hermit-thrush, far up the vale, sang his vesper hymn; while the

swallows, seeking their evening meal, circled above the river-fields

without an effort, twittering softly, now and then, as if they must

give thanks. Slight and indefinable touches in the scene, perhaps

the mere absence of the tiny human figures passing along the road or

labouring in the distant meadows, perhaps the blue curls of smoke

rising lazily from the farmhouse chimneys, or the family groups

sitting under the maple-trees before the door, diffused a sabbath

atmosphere over the world.

Then said the lad, lying on the grass beside me, "Father, who owns

the mountains?"

I happened to have heard, the day before, of two or three lumber

companies that had bought

some of the woodland slopes; so I told him their names, adding that

there were probably a good many different owners, whose claims taken

all together would cover the whole Franconia range of hills.

"Well," answered the lad, after a moment of silence, "I don't see

what difference that makes. Everybody can look at them."

They lay stretched out before us in the level sunlight, the sharp

peaks outlined against the sky, the vast ridges of forest sinking

smoothly towards the valleys. the deep hollows gathering purple

shadows in their bosoms, and the little foothills standing out in

rounded promontories of brighter green from the darker mass behind

them.

Far to the east, the long comb of Twin Mountain extended itself back

into the untrodden wilderness. Mount Garfield lifted a clear-cut

pyramid through the translucent air. The huge bulk of Lafayette

ascended majestically in front of us, crowned with a rosy diadem of

rocks. Eagle Cliff and Bald Mountain stretched their line of

scalloped peaks across the entrance to the Notch. Beyond that

shadowy vale, the swelling summits of Cannon Mountain rolled away to

meet the tumbling waves of Kinsman, dominated by one loftier crested

billow that seemed almost ready to curl and break out of green

silence into snowy foam. Far down the sleeping Landaff valley the

undulating dome of Moosilauke trembled in the distant blue.

They were all ours, from crested cliff to wooded base. The solemn

groves of firs and spruces, the plumed sierras of lofty pines, the

stately pillared forests of birch and beech, the wild ravines, the

tremulous thickets of silvery poplar, the bare peaks with their wide

outlooks, and the cool vales resounding with the ceaseless song of

little rivers,--we knew and loved them all; they ministered peace

and joy to us; they were all ours, though we held no title deeds and

our ownership had never been recorded.

What is property, after all? The law says there are two kinds, real

and personal. But it seems to me that the only real property is

that which is truly personal, that which we take into our inner life

and make our own forever, by understanding and admiration and

sympathy and love. This is the only kind of possession that is

worth anything.

A gallery of great paintings adorns the house of the Honourable

Midas Bond, and every year adds a new treasure to his collection.

He knows how much they cost him, and he keeps the run of the

quotations at the auction sales, congratulating himself as the price

of the works of his well-chosen artists rises in the scale, and the

value of his art treasures is enhanced. But why should he call them

his? He is only their custodian. He keeps them well varnished, and

framed in gilt. But he never passes through those gilded frames

into the world of beauty that lies behind the painted canvas. He

knows nothing of those lovely places from which the artist's soul

and hand have drawn their inspiration. They are closed and barred

to him. He has bought the pictures, but he cannot buy the key. The

poor art student who wanders through his gallery, lingering with awe

and love before the masterpieces, owns them far more truly than

Midas does.

Pomposus Silverman purchased a rich library a few years ago. The

books were rare and costly. That was the reason why Pomposus bought

them. He was proud to feel that he was the possessor of literary

treasures which were not to be found in the houses of his wealthiest

acquaintances. But the threadbare Bucherfreund, who was engaged at

a slender salary to catalogue the library and take care of it,

became the real proprietor. Pomposus paid for the books, but

Bucherfreund enjoyed them.

I do not mean to say that the possession of much money is always a

barrier to real wealth of mind and heart. Nor would I maintain that

all the poor of this world are rich in faith and heirs of the

kingdom. But some of them are. And if some of the rich of this

world (through the grace of Him with whom all things are possible)

are also modest in their tastes, and gentle in their hearts, and

open in their minds, and ready to be pleased with unbought

pleasures, they simply share in the best things which are provided

for all.

I speak not now of the strife that men wage over the definition and

the laws of property. Doubtless there is much here that needs to be

set right. There are men and women in the world who are shut out

from the right to earn a living, so poor that they must perish for

want of daily bread, so full of misery that there is no room for the

tiniest seed of joy in their lives. This is the lingering shame of

civilization. Some day, perhaps, we shall find the way to banish

it. Some day, every man shall have his title to a share in the

world's great work and the world's large joy.

But meantime it is certain that, where there are a hundred poor

bodies who suffer from physical privation, there are a thousand poor

souls who suffer from spiritual poverty. To relive this greater

suffering there needs no change of laws, only a change of heart.

What does it profit a man to be the landed proprietor of countless

acres unless he can reap the harvest of delight that blooms from

every rood of God's earth for the seeing eye and the loving spirit?

And who can reap that harvest so closely that there shall not be

abundant gleaning left for all mankind? The most that a wide estate

can yield to its legal owner is a living. But the real owner can

gather from a field of goldenrod, shining in the August sunlight, an

unearned increment of delight.

We measure success by accumulation. The measure is false. The true

measure is appreciation. He who loves most has most.

How foolishly we train ourselves for the work of life! We give our

most arduous and eager efforts to the cultivation of those faculties

which will serve us in the competitions of the forum and the market-

place. But if we were wise, we should care infinitely more for the

unfolding of those inward, secret, spiritual powers by which alone

we can become the owners of anything that is worth having. Surely

God is the great proprietor. Yet all His works He has given away.

He holds no title-deeds. The one thing that is His, is the perfect

understanding, the perfect joy, the perfect love, of all things that

He has made. To a share in this high ownership He welcomes all who

are poor in spirit. This is the earth which the meek inherit. This

is the patrimony of the saints in light.

"Come, laddie," I said to my comrade, "let us go home. You and I

are very rich. We own the mountains. But we can never sell them,

and we don't want to."

A LAZY, IDLE BROOK

"Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be

sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not

by any means certain that a man��s business is the most important

thing he has to do."--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: An Apology for Idlers.

I

A CASUAL INTRODUCTION

On the South Shore of Long Island, all things incline to a natural

somnolence. There are no ambitious mountains, no braggart cliffs,

no hasty torrents, no hustling waterfalls in that land,

"In which it seemeth always afternoon."

The salt meadows sleep in the summer sun; the farms and market-

gardens yield a placid harvest to a race of singularly unhurried

tillers of the soil; the low hills rise with gentle slopes, not

caring to get too high in the world, only far enough to catch a

pleasant glimpse of the sea and a breath of fresh air; the very

trees grow leisurely, as if they felt that they had "all the time

there is." And from this dreamy land, close as it lies to the

unresting ocean, the tumult of the breakers and the foam of ever-

turning tides are shut off by the languid lagoons of the Great South

Bay and a long range of dunes, crested with wire-grass, bay-bushes,

and wild-roses.

In such a country you could not expect a little brook to be noisy,

fussy, energetic. If it were not lazy, it would be out of keeping.

But the actual and undisguised idleness of this particular brook was

another affair, and one in which it was distinguished among its

fellows. For almost all the other little rivers of the South Shore,

lazy as they may be by nature, yet manage to do some kind of work

before they finish the journey from their crystal-clear springs into

the brackish waters of the bay. They turn the wheels of sleepy

gristmills, while the miller sits with his hands in his pockets

underneath the willow-trees. They fill reservoirs out of which

great steam-engines pump the water to quench the thirst of Brooklyn.

Even the smaller streams tarry long enough in their seaward

sauntering to irrigate a few cranberry-bogs and so provide that

savoury sauce which makes the Long Island turkey a fitter subject

for Thanksgiving.

But this brook of which I speak did none of these useful things. It

was absolutely out of business.

There was not a mill, nor a reservoir, nor a cranberry-bog, on all

its course of a short mile. The only profitable affair it ever

undertook was to fill a small ice-pond near its entrance into the

Great South Bay. You could hardly call this a very energetic

enterprise. It amounted to little more than a good-natured consent

to allow itself to be used by the winter for the making of ice, if

the winter happened to be cold enough. Even this passive industry

came to nothing; for the water, being separated from the bay only by

a short tideway under a wooden bridge on the south country road, was

too brackish to freeze easily; and the ice, being pervaded with

weeds, was not much relished by the public. So the wooden ice-

house, innocent of paint, and toned by the weather to a soft, sad-

coloured gray, stood like an improvised ruin among the pine-trees

beside the pond.

It was through this unharvested ice-pond, this fallow field of

water, that my lady Graygown and I entered on acquaintance with our

lazy, idle brook. We had a house, that summer, a few miles down the

bay. But it was a very small house, and the room that we like best

was out of doors. So we spent much time in a sailboat,--by name

"The Patience,"--making voyages of exploration into watery corners

and byways. Sailing past the wooden bridge one day, when a strong

east wind had made a very low tide, we observed the water flowing

out beneath the road with an eddying current. We were interested to

discover where such a stream came from. But the sailboat could not

go under the bridge, nor even make a landing on the shore without

risk of getting aground. The next day we came back in a rowboat to

follow the clue of curiosity. The tide was high now, and we passed

with the reversed current under the bridge, almost bumping our heads

against the timbers. Emerging upon the pond, we rowed across its

shallow, weed-encumbered waters, and were introduced without

ceremony to one of the most agreeable brooks that we had ever met.

It was quite broad where it came into the pond,--a hundred feet from

side to side,--bordered with flags and rushes and feathery meadow

grasses. The real channel meandered in sweeping curves from bank to

bank, and the water, except in the swifter current, was filled with

an amazing quantity of some aquatic moss. The woods came straggling

down on either shore. There were fallen trees in the stream here

and there. On one of the points an old swamp-maple, with its

decrepit branches and its leaves already touched with the hectic

colours of decay, hung far out over the water which was undermining

it, looking and leaning downward, like an aged man who bends, half-

sadly and half-willingly, towards the grave.

But for the most part the brook lay wide open to the sky, and the

tide, rising and sinking somewhat irregularly in the pond below,

made curious alternations in its depth and in the swiftness of its

current. For about half a mile we navigated this lazy little river,

and then we found that rowing would carry us no farther, for we came

to a place where the stream issued with a livelier flood from an

archway in a thicket.

This woodland portal was not more than four feet wide, and the

branches of the small trees were closely interwoven overhead. We

shipped the oars and took one of them for a paddle. Stooping down,

we pushed the boat through the archway and found ourselves in the

Fairy Dell. It was a long, narrow bower, perhaps four hundred feet

from end to end, with the brook dancing through it in a joyous,

musical flow over a bed of clean yellow sand and white pebbles.

There were deep places in the curves where you could hardly touch

bottom with an oar, and shallow places in the straight runs where

the boat would barely float. Not a ray of unbroken sunlight leaked

through the green roof of this winding corridor; and all along the

sides there were delicate mosses and tall ferns and wildwood flowers

that love the shade.

At the upper end of the bower our progress in the boat was barred by

a low bridge, on a forgotten road that wound through the pine-woods.

Here I left my lady Graygown, seated on the shady corner of the

bridge with a book, swinging her feet over the stream, while I set

out to explore its further course. Above the wood-road there were

no more fairy dells, nor easy-going estuaries. The water came down

through the most complicated piece of underbrush that I have ever

encountered. Alders and swamp maples and pussy-willows and gray

birches grew together in a wild confusion. Blackberry bushes and

fox-grapes and cat-briers trailed and twisted themselves anger.

What a pretty battle it is, and in a good cause, too! Waste no pity

on that big black ruffian. He is a villain and a thief, an egg-

stealer, an ogre, a devourer of unfledged innocents. The kingbirds

are not afraid of him, knowing that he is a coward at heart. They

fly upon him, now from below, now from above. They buffet him from

one side and from the other. They circle round him like a pair of

swift gunboats round an antiquated man-of-war. They even perch upon

his back and dash their beaks into his neck and pluck feathers from

his piratical plumage. At last his lumbering flight has carried him

far enough away, and the brave little defenders fly back to the

nest, poising above it on quivering wings for a moment, then dipping

down swiftly in pursuit of some passing insect. The war is over.

Courage has had its turn. Now tenderness comes into play.in an

incredible tangle. There was only one way to advance, and that was

to wade in the middle of the brook, stooping low, lifting up the

pendulous alder-branches, threading a tortuous course, now under and

now over the innumerable obstacles, as a darning-needle is pushed in

and out through the yarn of a woollen stocking.

It was dark and lonely in that difficult passage. The brook divided

into many channels, turning this way and that way, as if it were

lost in the woods. There were huge clumps of OSMUNDA REGALIS

spreading their fronds in tropical profusion. Mouldering logs were

covered with moss. The water gurgled slowly into deep corners under

the banks. Catbirds and blue jays fluttered screaming from the

thickets. Cotton-tailed rabbits darted away, showing the white flag

of fear. Once I thought I saw the fuscous gleam of a red fox

stealing silently through the brush. It would have been no surprise

to hear the bark of a raccoon, or see the eyes of a wildcat gleaming

through the leaves.

For more than an hour I was pushing my way through this miniature

wilderness of half a mile; and then I emerged suddenly, to find

myself face to face with--a railroad embankment and the afternoon

express, with its parlour-cars, thundering down to Southampton!

It was a strange and startling contrast. The explorer��s joy, the

sense of adventure, the feeling of wildness and freedom, withered

and crumpled somewhat preposterously at the sight of the parlour-

cars. My scratched hands and wet boots and torn coat seemed unkempt

and disreputable. Perhaps some of the well-dressed people looking

out at the windows of the train were the friends with whom we were

to dine on Saturday. BATECHE! What would they say to such a

costume as mine? What did I care what they said!

But, all the same, it was a shock, a disenchantment, to find that

civilization, with all its absurdities and conventionalities, was so

threateningly close to my new-found wilderness. My first enthusiasm

was not a little chilled as I walked back, along an open woodland

path, to the bridge where Graygown was placidly reading. Reading, I

say, though her book was closed, and her brown eyes were wandering

over the green leaves of the thicket, and the white clouds drifting,

drifting lazily across the blue deep of the sky.

II

A BETTER ACQUAINTANCE

On the voyage home, she gently talked me out of my disappointment,

and into a wiser frame of mind.

It was a surprise, of course, she admitted, to find that our

wilderness was so little, and to discover the trail of a parlour-car

on the edge of Paradise. But why not turn the surprise around, and

make it pleasant instead of disagreeable? Why not look at the

contrast from the side that we liked best?

It was not necessary that everybody should take the same view of

life that pleased us. The world would not get on very well without

people who preferred parlour-cars to canoes, and patent-leather

shoes to India-rubber boots, and ten-course dinners to picnics in

the woods. These good people were unconsciously toiling at the hard

and necessary work of life in order that we, of the chosen and

fortunate few, should be at liberty to enjoy the best things in the

world.

Why should we neglect our opportunities, which were also our real

duties? The nervous disease of civilization might prevail all

around us, but that ought not to destroy our grateful enjoyment of

the lucid intervals that were granted to us by a merciful

Providence.

Why should we not take this little untamed brook, running its humble

course through the borders of civilized life and midway between two

flourishing summer resorts,--a brook without a single house or a

cultivated field on its banks, as free and beautiful and secluded as

if it flowed through miles of trackless forest,--why not take this

brook as a sign that the ordering of the universe had a "good

intention" even for inveterate idlers, and that the great Arranger

of the world felt some kindness for such gipsy-hearts as ours? What

law, human or divine, was there to prevent us from making this

stream our symbol of deliverance from the conventional and

commonplace, our guide to liberty and a quiet mind?

So reasoned Graygown with her

      "most silver flow

 Of subtle-paced counsel in distress."

And, according to her word, so did we. That lazy, idle brook became

to us one of the best of friends; the pathfinder of happiness on

many a bright summer day; and, through long vacations, the faithful

encourager of indolence.

Indolence in the proper sense of the word, you understand. The

meaning which is commonly given to it, as Archbishop Trench pointed

out in his suggestive book about WORDS AND THEIR USES, is altogether

false. To speak of indolence as if it were a vice is just a great

big verbal slander.

Indolence is a virtue. It comes from two Latin words, which mean

freedom from anxiety or grief. And that is a wholesome state of

mind. There are times and seasons when it is even a pious and

blessed state of mind. Not to be in a hurry; not to be ambitious or

jealous or resentful; not to feel envious of anybody; not to fret

about to-day nor worry about to-morrow,--that is the way we ought

all to feel at some time in our lives; and that is the kind of

indolence in which our brook faithfully encouraged us.

��T is an age in which such encouragement is greatly needed. We have

fallen so much into the habit of being always busy that we know not

how nor when to break it off with firmness. Our business tags after

us into the midst of our pleasures, and we are ill at ease beyond

reach of the telegraph and the daily newspaper. We agitate

ourselves amazingly about a multitude of affairs,--the politics of

Europe, the state of the weather all around the globe, the marriages

and festivities of very rich people, and the latest novelties in

crime, none of which are of vital interest to us. The more earnest

souls among us are cultivating a vicious tendency to Summer Schools,

and Seaside Institutes of Philosophy, and Mountaintop Seminaries of

Modern Languages.

We toil assiduously to cram something more into those scrap-bags of

knowledge which we fondly call our minds. Seldom do we rest

tranquil long enough to find out whether there is anything in them

already that is of real value,--any native feeling, any original

thought, which would like to come out and sun itself for a while in

quiet.

For my part, I am sure that I stand more in need of a deeper sense

of contentment with life than of a knowledge of the Bulgarian

tongue, and that all the paradoxes of Hegel would not do me so much

good as one hour of vital sympathy with the careless play of

children. The Marquis du Paty de l��Huitre may espouse the daughter

and heiress of the Honourable James Bulger with all imaginable pomp,

if he will. CA NE M��INTRIGUE POINT DU TOUT. I would rather stretch

myself out on the grass and watch yonder pair of kingbirds carrying

luscious flies to their young ones in the nest, or chasing away the

marauding crow with shrill cries of The

young birds, all ignorant of the passing danger, but always

conscious of an insatiable hunger, are uttering loud remonstrances

and plaintive demands for food. Domestic life begins again, and

they that sow not, neither gather into barns, are fed.

Do you suppose that this wondrous stage of earth was set, and all

the myriad actors on it

taught to play their parts, without a spectator in view? Do you

think that there is anything better for you and me to do, now and

then, than to sit down quietly in a humble seat, and watch a few

scenes in the drama? Has it not something to say to us, and do we

not understand it best when we have a peaceful heart and free from

dolor? That is what IN-DOLENCE means, and there are no better

teachers of it then the light-hearted birds and untoiling flowers,

commended by the wisest of all masters to our consideration; nor can

we find a more pleasant pedagogue to lead us to their school than a

small, merry brook.

And this was what our chosen stream did for us. It was always

luring us away from an artificial life into restful companionship

with nature.

Suppose, for example, we found ourselves growing a bit dissatisfied

with the domestic arrangements of our little cottage, and coveting

the splendours of a grander establishment. An afternoon on the

brook was a good cure for that folly. Or suppose a day came when

there was an imminent prospect of many formal calls. We had an

important engagement up the brook; and while we kept it we could

think with satisfaction of the joy of our callers when they

discovered that they could discharge their whole duty with a piece

of pasteboard. This was an altruistic pleasure. Or suppose that a

few friends were coming to supper, and there were no flowers for the

supper-table. We could easily have bought them in the village. But

it was far more to our liking to take the children up the brook, and

come back with great bunches of wild white honeysuckle and blue

flag, or posies of arrowheads and cardinal-flowers. Or suppose that

I was very unwisely and reluctantly labouring at some serious piece

of literary work, promised for the next number of THE SCRIBBLER��S

REVIEW; and suppose that in the midst of this labour the sad news

came to me that the fisherman had forgotten to leave any fish at our

cottage that morning. Should my innocent babes and my devoted wife

be left to perish of starvation while I continued my poetical

comparison of the two Williams, Shakspeare and Watson? Inhuman

selfishness! Of course it was my plain duty to sacrifice my

inclinations, and get my fly-rod, and row away across the bay, with

a deceptive appearance of cheerfulness, to catch a basket of trout

in--

III

THE SECRETS OF INTIMACY

THERE! I came within eight letters of telling the name of the

brook, a thing that I am firmly resolved not to do. If it were an

ordinary fishless little river, or even a stream with nothing better

than grass-pike and sunfish in it, you should have the name and

welcome. But when a brook contains speckled trout, and when their

presence is known to a very few persons who guard the secret as the

dragon guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, and when the

size of the trout is large beyond the dreams of hope,--well, when

did you know a true angler who would willingly give away the name of

such a brook as that? You may find an encourager of indolence in

almost any stream of the South Side, and I wish you joy of your

brook. But if you want to catch trout in mine you must discover it

for yourself, or perhaps go with me some day, and solemnly swear

secrecy.

That was the way in which the freedom of the stream was conferred

upon me. There was a small boy in the village, the son of rich but

respectable parents, and an inveterate all-round sportsman, aged

fourteen years, with whom I had formed a close intimacy. I was

telling him about the pleasure of exploring the idle brook, and

expressing the opinion that in bygone days, (in that mythical "forty

years ago" when all fishing was good), there must have been trout in

it. A certain look came over the boy��s face. He gazed at me

solemnly, as if he were searching the inmost depths of my character

before he spoke.

"Say, do you want to know something?"

I assured him that an increase of knowledge was the chief aim of my

life.

"Do you promise you won��t tell?"

I expressed my readiness to be bound to silence by the most awful

pledge that the law would sanction.

"Wish you may die?"

I not only wished that I might die, but was perfectly certain that I

would die.

"Well, what��s the matter with catching trout in that brook now? Do

you want to go with me next Saturday? I saw four or five bully ones

last week, and got three."

On the appointed day we made the voyage, landed at the upper bridge,

walked around by the woodpath to the railroad embankment, and began

to worm our way down through the tangled wilderness. Fly-fishing,

of course, was out of the question. The only possible method of

angling was to let the line, baited with a juicy "garden hackle,"

drift down the current as far as possible before you, under the

alder-branches and the cat-briers, into the holes and corners of the

stream. Then, if there came a gentle tug on the rod, you must

strike, to one side or the other, as the branches might allow, and

trust wholly to luck for a chance to play the fish. Many a trout we

lost that day,--the largest ones, of course,--and many a hook was

embedded in a sunken log, or hopelessly entwined among the boughs

overhead. But when we came out at the bridge, very wet and

disheveled, we had seven pretty fish, the heaviest about half a

pound. The Fairy Dell yielded a brace of smaller ones, and

altogether we were reasonably happy as we took up the oars and

pushed out upon the open stream.

But if there were fish above, why should there not be fish below?

It was about sunset, the angler��s golden hour. We were already

committed to the crime of being late for supper. It would add

little to our guilt and much to our pleasure to drift slowly down

the middle of the brook and cast the artful fly in the deeper

corners on either shore. So I took off the vulgar bait-hook and put

on a delicate leader with a Queen of the Water for a tail-fly and a

Yellow Sally for a dropper,--innocent little confections of feathers

and tinsel, dressed on the tiniest hooks, and calculated to tempt

the appetite or the curiosity of the most capricious trout.

For a long time the whipping of the water produced no result, and it

seemed as if the dainty style of angling were destined to prove less

profitable than plain fishing with a worm. But presently we came to

an elbow of the brook, just above the estuary, where there was quite

a stretch of clear water along the lower side, with two half-sunken

logs sticking out from the bank, against which the current had

drifted a broad raft of weeds. I made a long cast, and sent the

tail-fly close to the edge of the weeds. There was a swelling

ripple on the surface of the water, and a noble fish darted from

under the logs, dashed at the fly, missed it, and whirled back to

his shelter.

"Gee!" said the boy, "that was a whacker! He made a wake like a

steamboat."

It was a moment for serious thought. What was best to be done with

that fish? Leave him to settle down for the night and come back

after him another day? Or try another cast for him at once? A fish

on Saturday evening is worth two on Monday morning. I changed the

Queen of the Water for a Royal Coachman tied on a number fourteen

hook,--white wings, peacock body with a belt of crimson silk,--and

sent it out again, a foot farther up the stream and a shade closer

to the weeds. As it settled on the water, there was a flash of gold

from the shadow beneath the logs, and a quick turn of the wrist made

the tiny hook fast in the fish. He fought wildly to get back to the

shelter of his logs, but the four ounce rod had spring enough in it

to hold him firmly away from that dangerous retreat. Then he

splurged up and down the open water, and made fierce dashes among

the grassy shallows, and seemed about to escape a dozen times. But

at last his force was played out; he came slowly towards the boat,

turning on his side, and I netted him in my hat.

"Bully for us;" said the boy, "we got him! What a dandy!"

It was indeed one of the handsomest fish that I have ever taken on

the South Side,--just short of two pounds and a quarter,--small

head, broad tail, and well-rounded sides coloured with orange and

blue and gold and red. A pair of the same kind, one weighing two

pounds and the other a pound and three quarters, were taken by

careful fishing down the lower end of the pool, and then we rowed

home through the dusk, pleasantly convinced that there is no virtue

more certainly rewarded than the patience of anglers, and entirely

willing to put up with a cold supper and a mild reproof for the sake

of sport.

Of course we could not resist the temptation to show those fish to

the neighbours. But, equally of course, we evaded the request to

give precise information as to the precise place where they were

caught. Indeed, I fear that there must have been something confused

in our description of where we had been on that afternoon. Our

carefully selected language may have been open to misunderstanding.

At all events, the next day, which was the Sabbath, there was a row

of eager but unprincipled anglers sitting on a bridge OVER ANOTHER

STREAM, and fishing for trout with worms and large expectations, but

without visible results.

The boy and I agreed that if this did not teach a good moral lesson

it was not our fault.

I obtained the boy��s consent to admit the partner of my life��s joys

and two of our children to the secret of the brook, and thereafter,

when we visited it, we took the fly-rod with us. If by chance

another boat passed us in the estuary, we were never fishing, but

only gathering flowers, or going for a picnic, or taking

photographs. But when the uninitiated ones had passed by, we would

get out the rod again, and try a few more casts.

One day in particular I remember, when Graygown and little Teddy

were my companions. We really had no hopes of angling, for the hour

was mid-noon, and the day was warm and still. But suddenly the

trout, by one of those unaccountable freaks which make their

disposition so interesting and attractive, began to rise all about

us in a bend of the stream.

"Look!" said Teddy; "wherever you see one of those big smiles on the

water, I believe there��s a fish!"

Fortunately the rod was at hand. Graygown and Teddy managed the

boat and the landing-net with consummate skill. We landed no less

than a dozen beautiful fish at that most unlikely hour and then

solemnly shook hands all around.

There is a peculiar pleasure in doing a thing like this, catching

trout in a place where nobody thinks of looking for them, and at an

hour when everybody believes they cannot be caught. It is more fun

to take one good fish out of an old, fished-out stream, near at hand

to the village, than to fill a basket from some far-famed and well-

stocked water. It is the unexpected touch that tickles our sense of

pleasure. While life lasts, we are always hoping for it and

expecting it. There is no country so civilized, no existence so

humdrum, that there is not room enough in it somewhere for a lazy,

idle brook, an encourager of indolence, with hope of happy

surprises.

THE OPEN FIRE

"It is a vulgar notion that a fire is only for heat. A chief value

of it is, however, to look at. And it is never twice the same."--

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER: Backlog Studies.

I

LIGHTING UP

Man is the animal that has made friends with the fire.

All the other creatures, in their natural state, are afraid of it.

They look upon it with wonder and dismay. It fascinates them,

sometimes, with its glittering eyes in the night. The squirrels and

the hares come pattering softly towards it through the underbrush

around the new camp. The fascinated deer stares into the blaze of

the jack-light while the hunter��s canoe creeps through the lily-

pads. But the charm that masters them is one of dread, not of love.

It is the witchcraft of the serpent��s lambent look. When they know

what it means, when the heat of the fire touches them, or even when

its smell comes clearly to their most delicate sense, they recognize

it as their enemy, the Wild Huntsman whose red hounds can follow,

follow for days without wearying, growing stronger and more furious

with every turn of the chase. Let but a trail of smoke drift down

the wind across the forest, and all the game for miles and miles

will catch the signal for fear and flight.

Many of the animals have learned how to make houses for themselves.

The CABANE of the beaver is a wonder of neatness and comfort, much

preferable to the wigwam of his Indian hunter. The muskrat knows

how thick and high to build the dome of his waterside cottage, in

order to protect himself against the frost of the coming winter and

the floods of the following spring. The woodchuck��s house has two

or three doors; and the squirrel��s dwelling is provided with a good

bed and a convenient storehouse for nuts and acorns. The sportive

otters have a toboggan slide in front of their residence; and the

moose in winter make a "yard," where they can take exercise

comfortably and find shelter for sleep. But there is one thing

lacking in all these various dwellings,--a fireplace.

Man is the only creature that dares to light a fire and to live with

it. The reason? Because he alone has learned how to put it out.

It is true that two of his humbler friends have been converted to

fire-worship. The dog and the cat, being half-humanized, have begun

to love the fire. I suppose that a cat seldom comes so near to

feeling a true sense of affection as when she has finished her

saucer of bread and milk, and stretched herself luxuriously

underneath the kitchen stove, while her faithful mistress washes up

the dishes. As for a dog, I am sure that his admiring love for his

master is never greater than when they come in together from the

hunt, wet and tired, and the man gathers a pile of wood in front of

the tent, touches it with a tiny magic wand, and suddenly the clear,

consoling flame springs up, saying cheerfully, "Here we are, at home

in the forest; come into the warmth; rest, and eat, and sleep."

When the weary, shivering dog sees this miracle, he knows that his

master is a great man and a lord of things.

After all, that is the only real open fire. Wood is the fuel for

it. Out-of-doors is the place for it. A furnace is an underground

prison for a toiling slave. A stove is a cage for a tame bird.

Even a broad hearthstone and a pair of glittering andirons--the best

ornament of a room--must be accepted as an imitation of the real

thing. The veritable open fire is built in the open, with the whole

earth for a fireplace and the sky for a chimney.

To start a fire in the open is by no means as easy as it looks. It

is one of those simple tricks that every one thinks he can perform

until he tries it.

To do it without trying,--accidentally and unwillingly,--that, of

course, is a thing for which any fool is fit. You knock out the

ashes from your pipe on a fallen log; you toss the end of a match

into a patch of grass, green on top, but dry as punk underneath; you

scatter the dead brands of an old fire among the moss,--a

conflagration is under way before you know it.

A fire in the woods is one thing; a comfort and a joy. Fire in the

woods is another thing; a terror, an uncontrollable fury, a burning

shame.

But the lighting up of a proper fire, kindly, approachable,

serviceable, docile, is a work of intelligence. If, perhaps, you

have to do it in the rain, with a single match, it requires no

little art and skill.

There is plenty of wood everywhere, but not a bit to burn. The

fallen trees are waterlogged. The dead leaves are as damp as grief.

The charred sticks that you find in an old fireplace are absolutely

incombustible. Do not trust the handful of withered twigs and

branches that you gather from the spruce-trees. They seem dry, but

they are little better for your purpose than so much asbestos. You

make a pile of them in some apparently suitable hollow, and lay a

few larger sticks on top. Then you hastily scratch your solitary

match on the seat of your trousers and thrust it into the pile of

twigs. What happens? The wind whirls around in your stupid little

hollow, and the blue flame of the sulphur spirts and sputters for an

instant, and then goes out. Or perhaps there is a moment of

stillness; the match flares up bravely; the nearest twigs catch

fire, crackling and sparkling; you hurriedly lay on more sticks; but

the fire deliberately dodges them, creeps to the corner of the pile

where the twigs are fewest and dampest, snaps feebly a few times,

and expires in smoke. Now where are you? How far is it to the

nearest match?

If you are wise, you will always make your fire before you light it.

Time is never saved by doing a thing badly.

II

THE CAMP-FIRE

In the making of fires there is as much difference as in the

building of houses. Everything depends upon the purpose that you

have in view. There is the camp-fire, and the cooking-fire, and the

smudge-fire, and the little friendship-fire,--not to speak of other

minor varieties. Each of these has its own proper style of

architecture, and to mix them is false art and poor economy.

The object of the camp-fire is to give heat, and incidentally light,

to your tent or shanty. You can hardly build this kind of a fire

unless you have a good axe and know how to chop. For the first

thing that you need is a solid backlog, the thicker the better, to

hold the heat and reflect it into the tent. This log must not be

too dry, or it will burn out quickly. Neither must it be too damp,

else it will smoulder and discourage the fire. The best wood for it

is the body of a yellow birch, and, next to that, a green balsam.

It should be five or six feet long, and at least two and a half feet

in diameter. If you cannot find a tree thick enough, cut two or

three lengths of a smaller one; lay the thickest log on the ground

first, about ten or twelve feet in front of the tent; drive two

strong stakes behind it, slanting a little backward; and lay the

other logs on top of the first, resting against the stakes.

Now you are ready for the hand-chunks, or andirons. These are

shorter sticks of wood, eight or ten inches thick, laid at right

angles to the backlog, four or five feet apart. Across these you

are to build up the firewood proper.

Use a dry spruce-tree, not one that has fallen, but one that is dead

and still standing, if you want a lively, snapping fire. Use a hard

maple or a hickory if you want a fire that will burn steadily and

make few sparks. But if you like a fire to blaze up at first with a

splendid flame, and then burn on with an enduring heat far into the

night, a young white birch with the bark on is the tree to choose.

Six or eight round sticks of this laid across the hand-chunks, with

perhaps a few quarterings of a larger tree, will make a glorious

fire.

But before you put these on, you must be ready to light up. A few

splinters of dry spruce or pine or balsam, stood endwise against the

backlog, or, better still, piled up in a pyramid between the hand-

chunks; a few strips of birch-bark; and one good match,--these are

all that you want. But be sure that your match is a good one. It

is better to see to this before you go into the brush. Your

comfort, even your life, may depend on it.

"AVEC CES ALLUMETTES-LA," said my guide at LAC ST. JEAN one day, as

he vainly tried to light his pipe with a box of parlour matches from

the hotel,--AVEC CES GNOGNOTTES D��ALLUMETTES ON POURRA MOURIR AU

BOIS!"

In the woods, the old-fashioned brimstone match of our grandfathers--

the match with a brown head and a stout stick and a dreadful smell--

is the best. But if you have only one, do not trust even that to

light your fire directly. Use it first to touch off a roll of

birch-bark which you hold in your hand. Then, when the bark is well

alight, crinkling and curling, push it under the heap of kindlings,

give the flame time to take a good hold, and lay your wood over it,

a stick at a time, until the whole pile is blazing. Now your fire

is started. Your friendly little red-haired gnome is ready to serve

you through the night.

He will dry your clothes if you are wet. He will cheer you up if

you are despondent. He will diffuse an air of sociability through

the camp, and draw the men together in a half circle for

storytelling and jokes and singing. He will hold a flambeau for you

while you spread your blankets on the boughs and dress for bed. He

will keep you warm while you sleep,--at least till about three

o��clock in the morning, when you dream that you are out sleighing in

your pajamas, and wake up with a shiver.

"HOLA, FERDINAND, FRANCOIS!" you call out from your bed, pulling the

blankets over your ears; "RAMANCHEZ LE FEU, S��IL VOUS PLAIT. C��EST

UN FREITE DE CHIEN."

III

THE COOKING-FIRE

Of course such a fire as I have been describing can be used for

cooking, when it has burned down a little, and there is a bed of hot

embers in front of the backlog. But a correct kitchen fire should

be constructed after another fashion. What you want now is not

blaze, but heat, and that not diffused, but concentrated. You must

be able to get close to your fire without burning your boots or

scorching your face.

If you have time and the material, make a fireplace of big stones.

But not of granite, for that will split with the heat, and perhaps

fly in your face.

If you are in a hurry and there are no suitable stones at hand, lay

two good logs nearly parallel with each other, a foot or so apart,

and build your fire between them. For a cooking-fire, use split

wood in short sticks. Let the first supply burn to glowing coals

before you begin. A frying-pan that is lukewarm one minute and red-

hot the next is the abomination of desolation. If you want black

toast, have it made before a fresh, sputtering, blazing heap of

wood.

In fires, as in men, an excess of energy is a lack of usefulness.

The best work is done without many sparks. Just enough is the right

kind of a fire and a feast.

To know how to cook is not a very elegant accomplishment. Yet there

are times and seasons when it seems to come in better than

familiarity with the dead languages, or much skill upon the lute.

You cannot always rely on your guides for a tasteful preparation of

food. Many of them are ignorant of the difference between frying

and broiling, and their notion of boiling a potato or a fish is to

reduce it to a pulp. Now and then you find a man who has a natural

inclination to the culinary art, and who does very well within

familiar limits.

Old Edouard, the Montaignais Indian who cooked for my friends H. E.

G. and C. S. D. last summer on the STE. MARGUERITE EN BAS, was such

a man. But Edouard could not read, and the only way he could tell

the nature of the canned provisions was by the pictures on the cans.

If the picture was strange to him, there was no guessing what he

would do with the contents of the can. He was capable of roasting

strawberries, and serving green peas cold for dessert. One day a

can of mullagatawny soup and a can of apricots were handed out to

him simultaneously and without explanations. Edouard solved the

problem by opening both cans and cooking them together. We had a

new soup that day, MULLAGATAWNY AUX APRICOTS. It was not as bad as

it sounds. It tasted somewhat like chutney.

The real reason why food that is cooked over an open fire tastes so

good to us is because we are really hungry when we get it. The man

who puts up provisions for camp has a great advantage over the

dealers who must satisfy the pampered appetite of people in houses.

I never can get any bacon in New York like that which I buy at a

little shop in Quebec to take into the woods. If I ever set up in

the grocery business, I shall try to get a good trade among anglers.

It will be easy to please my customers.

The reputation that trout enjoy as a food-fish is partly due to the

fact that they are usually cooked over an open fire. In the city

they never taste as good. It is not merely a difference in

freshness. It is a change in the sauce. If the truth must be told,

even by an angler, there are at least five salt-water fish which are

better than trout,--to eat. There is none better to catch.

IV

THE SMUDGE-FIRE

But enough of the cooking-fire. Let us turn now to the subject of

the smudge, known in Lower Canada as LA BOUCANE. The smudge owes

its existence to the pungent mosquito, the sanguinary black-fly, and

the peppery midge,--LE MARINGOUIN, LA MOUSTIQUE, ET LE BRULOT. To

what it owes its English name I do not know; but its French name

means simply a thick, nauseating, intolerable smoke.

The smudge is called into being for the express purpose of creating

a smoke of this kind, which is as disagreeable to the mosquito, the

black-fly, and the midge as it is to the man whom they are

devouring. But the man survives the smoke, while the insects

succumb to it, being destroyed or driven away. Therefore the

smudge, dark and bitter in itself, frequently becomes, like

adversity, sweet in its uses. It must be regarded as a form of fire

with which man has made friends under the pressure of a cruel

necessity.

It would seem as if it ought to be the simplest affair in the world

to light up a smudge. And so it is--if you are not trying.

An attempt to produce almost any other kind of a fire will bring

forth smoke abundantly. But when you deliberately undertake to

create a smudge, flames break from the wettest timber, and green

moss blazes with a furious heat. You hastily gather handfuls of

seemingly incombustible material and throw it on the fire, but the

conflagration increases. Grass and green leaves hesitate for an

instant and then flash up like tinder. The more you put on, the

more your smudge rebels against its proper task of smudging. It

makes a pleasant warmth, to encourage the black-flies; and bright

light to attract and cheer the mosquitoes. Your effort is a

brilliant failure.

The proper way to make a smudge is this. Begin with a very little,

lowly fire. Let it be bright, but not ambitious. Don��t try to make

a smoke yet.

Then gather a good supply of stuff which seems likely to suppress

fire without smothering it. Moss of a certain kind will do, but not

the soft, feathery moss that grows so deep among the spruce-trees.

Half-decayed wood is good; spongy, moist, unpleasant stuff, a

vegetable wet blanket. The bark of dead evergreen trees, hemlock,

spruce, or balsam, is better still. Gather a plentiful store of it.

But don��t try to make a smoke yet.

Let your fire burn a while longer; cheer it up a little. Get some

clear, resolute, unquenchable coals aglow in the heart of it. Don��t

try to make a smoke yet.

Now pile on your smouldering fuel. Fan it with your hat. Kneel

down and blow it, and in ten minutes you will have a smoke that will

make you wish you had never been born.

That is the proper way to make a smudge. But the easiest way is to

ask your guide to make it for you.

If he makes it in an old iron pot, so much the better, for then you

can move it around to the windward when the breeze veers, and carry

it into your tent without risk of setting everything on fire, and

even take it with you in the canoe while you are fishing.

Some of the pleasantest pictures in the angler��s gallery of

remembrance are framed in the smoke that rises from a smudge.

With my eyes shut, I can call up a vision of eight birch-bark canoes

floating side by side on Moosehead Lake, on a fair June morning,

fifteen years ago. They are anchored off Green Island, riding

easily on the long, gentle waves. In the stern of each canoe there

is a guide with a long-handled net; in the bow, an angler with a

light fly-rod; in the middle, a smudge-kettle, smoking steadily. In

the air to the windward of the little fleet hovers a swarm of flies

drifting down on the shore breeze, with bloody purpose in their

breasts, but baffled by the protecting smoke. In the water to the

leeward plays a school of speckled trout, feeding on the minnows

that hang around the sunken ledges of rock. As a larger wave than

usual passes over the ledges, it lifts the fish up, and you can see

the big fellows, three, and four, and even five pounds apiece,

poising themselves in the clear brown water. A long cast will send

the fly over one of them. Let it sink a foot. Draw it up with a

fluttering motion. Now the fish sees it, and turns to catch it.

There is a yellow gleam in the depth, a sudden swirl on the surface;

you strike sharply, and the trout is matching his strength against

the spring of your four ounces of split bamboo.

You can guess at his size, as he breaks water, by the breadth of his

tail: a pound of weight to an inch of tail,--that is the traditional

measure, and it usually comes pretty close to the mark, at least in

the case of large fish. But it is never safe to record the weight

until the trout is in the canoe. As the Canadian hunters say, "Sell

not the skin of the bear while he carries it."

Now the breeze that blows over Green Island drops away, and the

smoke of the eight smudge-kettles falls like a thick curtain. The

canoes, the dark shores of Norcross Point, the twin peaks of Spencer

Mountain, the dim blue summit of Katahdin, the dazzling sapphire

sky, the flocks of fleece-white clouds shepherded on high by the

western wind, all have vanished. With closed eyes I see another

vision, still framed in smoke,--a vision of yesterday.

It is a wild river flowing into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the

COTE NORD, far down towards Labrador. There is a long, narrow,

swift pool between two parallel ridges of rock. Over the ridge on

the right pours a cataract of pale yellow foam. At the bottom of

the pool, the water slides down into a furious rapid, and dashes

straight through an impassable gorge half a mile to the sea. The

pool is full of salmon, leaping merrily in their delight at coming

into their native stream. The air is full of black-flies, rejoicing

in the warmth of the July sun. On a slippery point of rock, below

the fall, are two anglers, tempting the fish and enduring the flies.

Behind them is an old HABITANT raising a mighty column of smoke.

Through the cloudy pillar which keeps back the Egyptian host, you

see the waving of a long rod. A silver-gray fly with a barbed tail

darts out across the pool, swings around with the current, well

under water, and slowly works past the big rock in the centre, just

at the head of the rapid. Almost past it, but not quite: for

suddenly the fly disappears; the line begins to run out; the reel

sings sharp and shrill; a salmon is hooked.

But how well is he hooked? That is the question. This is no easy

pool to play a fish in. There is no chance to jump into a canoe and

drop below him, and get the current to help you in drowning him.

You cannot follow him along the shore. You cannot even lead him

into quiet water, where the gaffer can creep near to him unseen and

drag him in with a quick stroke. You must fight your fish to a

finish, and all the advantages are on his side. The current is

terribly strong. If he makes up his mind to go downstream to the

sea, the only thing you can do is to hold him by main force; and

then it is ten to one that the hook tears out or the leader breaks.

It is not in human nature for one man to watch another handling a

fish in such a place without giving advice. "Keep the tip of your

rod up. Don��t let your reel overrun. Stir him up a little, he ��s

sulking. Don��t let him ��jig,�� or you��ll lose him. You ��re playing

him too hard. There, he ��s going to jump again. Drop your tip.

Stop him, quick! he ��s going down the rapid!"

Of course the man who is playing the salmon does not like this. If

he is quick-tempered, sooner or later he tells his counsellor to

shut up. But if he is a gentle, early-Christian kind of a man, wise

as a serpent and harmless as a dove, he follows the advice that is

given to him, promptly and exactly. Then, when it is all ended, and

he has seen the big fish, with the line over his shoulder, poised

for an instant on the crest of the first billow of the rapid, and

has felt the leader stretch and give and SNAP!--then he can have the

satisfaction, while he reels in his slack line, of saying to his

friend, "Well, old man, I did everything just as you told me. But I

think if I had pushed that fish a little harder at the beginning, AS

I WANTED TO, I might have saved him."

But really, of course, the chances were all against it. In such a

pool, most of the larger fish get away. Their weight gives them a

tremendous pull. The fish that are stopped from going into the

rapid, and dragged back from the curling wave, are usually the

smaller ones. Here they are,--twelve pounds, eight pounds, six

pounds, five pounds and a half, FOUR POUNDS! Is not this the

smallest salmon that you ever saw? Not a grilse, you understand,

but a real salmon, of brightest silver, hall-marked with St.

Andrew��s cross.

Now let us sit down for a moment and watch the fish trying to leap

up the falls. There is a clear jump of about ten feet, and above

that an apparently impossible climb of ten feet more up a ladder of

twisting foam. A salmon darts from the boiling water at the bottom

of the fall like an arrow from a bow. He rises in a beautiful

curve, fins laid close to his body and tail quivering; but he has

miscalculated his distance. He is on the downward curve when the

water strikes him and tumbles him back. A bold little fish, not

more than eighteen inches long, makes a jump at the side of the

fall, where the water is thin, and is rolled over and over in the

spray. A larger salmon rises close beside us with a tremendous

rush, bumps his nose against a jutting rock, and flops back into the

pool. Now comes a fish who has made his calculations exactly. He

leaves the pool about eight feet from the foot of the fall, rises

swiftly, spreads his fins, and curves his tail as if he were flying,

strikes the water where it is thickest just below the brink, holds

on desperately, and drives himself, with one last wriggle, through

the bending stream, over the edge, and up the first step of the

foaming stairway. He has obeyed the strongest instinct of his

nature, and gone up to make love in the highest fresh water that he

can reach.

The smoke of the smudge-fire is sharp and tearful, but a man can

learn to endure a good deal of it when he can look through its rings

at such scenes as these.

V

THE LITTLE FRIENDSHIP-FIRE

There are times and seasons when the angler has no need of any of

the three fires of which we have been talking. He sleeps in a

house. His breakfast and dinner are cooked for him in a kitchen.

He is in no great danger from black-flies or mosquitoes. All he

needs now, as he sets out to spend a day on the Neversink, or the

Willowemoc, or the Shepaug, or the Swiftwater, is a good lunch in

his pocket, and a little friendship-fire to burn pleasantly beside

him while he eats his frugal fare and prolongs his noonday rest.

This form of fire does less work than any other in the world. Yet

it is far from being useless; and I, for one, should be sorry to

live without it. Its only use is to make a visible centre of

interest where there are two or three anglers eating their lunch

together, or to supply a kind of companionship to a lone fisherman.

It is kindled and burns for no other purpose than to give you the

sense of being at home and at ease. Why the fire should do this, I

cannot tell, but it does.

You may build your friendship-fire in almost any way that pleases

you; but this is the way in which you shall build it best. You have

no axe, of course, so you must look about for the driest sticks that

you can find. Do not seek them close beside the stream, for there

they are likely to be water-soaked; but go back into the woods a bit

and gather a good armful of fuel. Then break it, if you can, into

lengths of about two feet, and construct your fire in the following

fashion.

Lay two sticks parallel, and put between them a pile of dried grass,

dead leaves, small twigs, and the paper in which your lunch was

wrapped. Then lay two other sticks crosswise on top of your first

pair. Strike your match and touch your kindlings. As the fire

catches, lay on other pairs of sticks, each pair crosswise to the

pair that is below it, until you have a pyramid of flame. This is

"a Micmac fire" such as the Indians make in the woods.

Now you can pull off your wading-boots and warm your feet at the

blaze. You can toast your bread if you like. You can even make

shift to broil one of your trout, fastened on the end of a birch

twig if you have a fancy that way. When your hunger is satisfied,

you shake out the crumbs for the birds and the squirrels, pick up a

stick with a coal at the end to light your pipe, put some more wood

on your fire, and settle down for an hour��s reading if you have a

book in your pocket, or for a good talk if you have a comrade with

you.

The stream of time flows swift and smooth, by such a fire as this.

The moments slip past unheeded; the sun sinks down his western arch;

the shadows begin to fall across the brook; it is time to move on

for the afternoon fishing. The fire has almost burned out. But do

not trust it too much. Throw some sand over it, or bring a hatful

of water from the brook to pour on it, until you are sure that the

last glowing ember is extinguished, and nothing but the black coals

and the charred ends of the sticks are left.

Even the little friendship-fire must keep the law of the bush. All

lights out when their purpose is fulfilled!

VI

ALTARS OF REMEMBRANCE

It is a question that we have often debated, in the informal

meetings of our Petrine Club: Which is pleasanter,--to fish an old

stream, or a new one?

The younger members are all for the "fresh woods and pastures new."

They speak of the delight of turning off from the high-road into

some faintly-marked trail; following it blindly through the forest,

not knowing how far you have to go; hearing the voice of waters

sounding through the woodland; leaving the path impatiently and

striking straight across the underbrush; scrambling down a steep

bank, pushing through a thicket of alders, and coming out suddenly,

face to face with a beautiful, strange brook. It reminds you, of

course, of some old friend. It is a little like the Beaverkill, or

the Ausable, or the Gale River. And yet it is different. Every

stream has its own character and disposition. Your new acquaintance

invites you to a day of discoveries. If the water is high, you will

follow it down, and have easy fishing. If the water is low, you

will go upstream, and fish "fine and far-off." Every turn in the

avenue which the little river has made for you opens up a new view,--

a rocky gorge where the deep pools are divided by white-footed

falls; a lofty forest where the shadows are deep and the trees arch

overhead; a flat, sunny stretch where the stream is spread out, and

pebbly islands divide the channels, and the big fish are lurking at

the sides in the sheltered corners under the bushes. From scene to

scene you follow on, delighted and expectant, until the night

suddenly drops its veil, and then you will be lucky if you can find

your way home in the dark!

Yes, it is all very good, this exploration of new streams. But, for

my part, I like still better to go back to a familiar little river,

and fish or dream along the banks where I have dreamed and fished

before. I know every bend and curve: the sharp turn where the water

runs under the roots of the old hemlock-tree; the snaky glen, where

the alders stretch their arms far out across the stream; the meadow

reach, where the trout are fat and silvery, and will only rise about

sunrise or sundown, unless the day is cloudy; the Naiad��s Elbow,

where the brook rounds itself, smooth and dimpled, to embrace a

cluster of pink laurel-bushes. All these I know; yes, and almost

every current and eddy and backwater I know long before I come to

it. I remember where I caught the big trout the first year I came

to the stream; and where I lost a bigger one. I remember the pool

where there were plenty of good fish last year, and wonder whether

they are there now.

Better things than these I remember: the companions with whom I have

followed the stream in days long past; the rendezvous with a comrade

at the place where the rustic bridge crosses the brook; the hours of

sweet converse beside the friendship-fire; the meeting at twilight

with my lady Graygown and the children, who have come down by the

wood-road to walk home with me.

Surely it is pleasant to follow an old stream. Flowers grow along

its banks which are not to be found anywhere else in the wide world.

"There is rosemary, that ��s for remembrance; and there is pansies,

that ��s for thoughts!"

One May evening, a couple of years since, I was angling in the

Swiftwater, and came upon Joseph Jefferson, stretched out on a large

rock in midstream, and casting the fly down a long pool. He had

passed the threescore years and ten, but he was as eager and as

happy as a boy in his fishing.

"You here!" I cried. "What good fortune brought you into these

waters?"

"Ah," he answered, "I fished this brook forty-five years ago. It

was in the Paradise Valley that I first thought of Rip Van Winkle.

I wanted to come back again for the sake of old times."

But what has all this to do with an open fire? I will tell you. It

is at the places along the stream, where the little flames of love

and friendship have been kindled in bygone days, that the past

returns most vividly. These are the altars of remembrance.

It is strange how long a small fire will leave its mark. The

charred sticks, the black coals, do not decay easily. If they lie

well up the hank, out of reach of the spring floods, they will stay

there for years. If you have chanced to build a rough fireplace of

stones from the brook, it seems almost as if it would last forever.

There is a mossy knoll beneath a great butternut-tree on the

Swiftwater where such a fireplace was built four years ago; and

whenever I come to that place now I lay the rod aside, and sit down

for a little while by the fast-flowing water, and remember.

This is what I see: A man wading up the stream, with a creel over

his shoulder, and perhaps a dozen trout in it; two little lads in

gray corduroys running down the path through the woods to meet him,

one carrying a frying-pan and a kettle, the other with a basket of

lunch on his arm. Then I see the bright flames leaping up in the

fireplace, and hear the trout sizzling in the pan, and smell the

appetizing odour. Now I see the lads coming back across the foot-

bridge that spans the stream, with a bottle of milk from the nearest

farmhouse. They are laughing and teetering as they balance along

the single plank. Now the table is spread on the moss. How good

the lunch tastes! Never were there such pink-fleshed trout, such

crisp and savoury slices of broiled bacon. Douglas, (the beloved

doll that the younger lad shamefacedly brings out from the pocket of

his jacket,) must certainly have some of it. And after the lunch is

finished, and the bird��s portion has been scattered on the moss, we

creep carefully on our hands and knees to the edge of the brook, and

look over the bank at the big trout that is poising himself in the

amber water. We have tried a dozen times to catch him, but never

succeeded. The next time, perhaps--

Well, the fireplace is still standing. The butternut-tree spreads

its broad branches above the stream. The violets and the bishop��s-

caps and the wild anemones are sprinkled over the banks. The

yellow-throat and the water-thrush and the vireos still sing the

same tunes in the thicket. And the elder of the two lads often

comes back with me to that pleasant place and shares my fisherman��s

luck beside the Swiftwater.

But the younger lad?

Ah, my little Barney, you have gone to follow a new stream,--clear

as crystal,--flowing through fields of wonderful flowers that never

fade. It is a strange river to Teddy and me; strange and very far

away. Some day we shall see it with you; and you will teach us the

names of those blossoms that do not wither. But till then, little

Barney, the other lad and I will follow the old stream that flows by

the woodland fireplace,--your altar.

Rue grows here. Yes, there is plenty of rue. But there is also

rosemary, that ��s for remembrance! And close beside it I see a

little heart��s-ease.

A SLUMBER SONG

FOR THE FISHERMAN'S CHILD

Furl your sail, my little boatie;

Here ��s the haven, still and deep,

Where the dreaming tides, in-streaming,

     Up the channel creep.

See, the sunset breeze is dying;

Hark, the plover, landward flying,

Softly down the twilight crying;

Come to anchor, little boatie,

    In the port of Sleep.

Far away, my little boatie,

Roaring waves are white with foam;

Ships are striving, onward driving,

    Day and night they roam.

Father ��s at the deep-sea trawling,

In the darkness, rowing, hauling,

While the hungry winds are calling,--

God protect him, little boatie,

    Bring him safely home!

Not for you, my little boatie,

Is the wide and weary sea;

You ��re too slender, and too tender,

    You must rest with me.

All day long you have been straying

Up and down the shore and playing;

Come to port, make no delaying!

Day is over, little boatie,

    Night falls suddenly.

Furl your sail, my little boatie;

Fold your wings, my tired dove.

Dews are sprinkling, stars are twinkling

    Drowsily above.

Cease from sailing, cease from rowing;

Rock upon the dream-tide, knowing

Safely o��er your rest are glowing,

All the night, my little boatie, 

    Harbour-lights of love.

End