you may put the wire of your hook into it, with as little bruising or hurting of the fish as art or diligence will enable you to do; and so carry your wire along his back, near the tail of your fish, between the skin and the body of it; draw out the wire of your hook at another scar near his tail; then tie him about it with thread, but no harder than of necessity, to prevent hurting the fish; and the better to avoid hurting, have a kind of probe to open the way for the more easy entrance and passage of your wire.'

"Now if, in the hands of a man so careful, and unquestionably so kind, as Isaac Walton, the fish used for bait was treated with this consideration, what must be the fate of similar victims in the hands of those thousands of thoughtless or cruel sportsmen who have never learned to regard it as a matter of the slightest importance whether animals are tortured or not. But let us hear what he has to say about baiting with live frogs."

"I don't think you need read that," interrupted Charles. "There are many things in the book better worth reading than that."

"Still I should like you to hear it," said his mother, and she read accordingly. "You must thus use your frog, that he may continue long alive. Put your hook into his mouth and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the wire of your hook, and in so doing, use him as though you loved him' (rather difficult to be sure), 'that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he may live the longer.'

"The writer then goes on to state how such live

bait may make sport by being tied to the body of a duck, or a goose, and the bird chased over a river or pond. This refinement upon the art of fishing reminds me of the story of a gander told by a farmer in Scotland, whose property he was, and who had often been at great pains to restrain the wandering habits of his vagrant bird. Wishing to check this propensity, the farmer one day seized the gander just as he was about to take to the water, and tying a large fishhook, to which was fastened a piece of dead frog, to his leg, sent him in this way to pursue his voyage.

"The bait soon caught the eye of a greedy fish, which, swallowing the hook, soon stopped the progress of the astonished gander, who fluttered and struggled on the surface of the water, until ducked underneath by the pulling of the fish at the hook. In this manner the contest was maintained for some time; at one moment the fish, and at another the goose, appearing to gain the mastery. At last, however, the gander proved victorious, and bearing away to the nearest shore, landed among his cackling companions one of the finest fish ever caught in fresh water. This expedient is said to have answered the purpose of the farmer, by deterring the gander from ever again venturing beyond his own pond.

"But to return to your friend Isaac Walton. I must in candor confess, that in his curious book, The Complete Angler,' there is so much of gentleness, kindness, and good feeling, that I only regret his consideration should have been bestowed upon the mode of torturing animals with the least possible cruelty, rather than upon the pleasure of

studying their habits without torturing them at all. There is also a healthy kind of freshness in all his descriptions of rural life and scenery, which renders his book altogether like a poem, rather than a treatise upon art, and particularly that of killing. Who, for instance, would believe that the following passage, scarcely inferior to any of our pastoral poetry, could have been written by one whose chief delight was in making sport of death? 'Look, under that broad beach-tree, I sat down when I was last this way a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow of that primrose hill; there I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently toward their centre, the tempestuous sea; yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into foam: and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, while others sported themselves in the cheerful sun, and others I saw craving comfort of their bleating dams.'

"We have here," observed Mrs. Dalton, “ one of the sweetest pictures of rural scenery which I remember ever having met with."

"I can not help fancying, after all," said Charles, "that it must be something of this kind which gives to that strange book of Isaac Walton its indescribable charm. One seems to be living, when one reads it, in the very air and sunshine of which he writes, and to see the identical green meadows through which his favorite rivers flow."

"You are perfectly right, my love," said his

mother," and I wish every one was wise enough to come to the same conclusion. Let the sport of angling boast of all the pleasure which exclusively belongs to it; but let the green fields, the quiet streams, the fresh air, and the blue skies, also have their due, and do not suppose because you are happy under such circumstances as Isaac Walton describes, that it must necessarily be because you are catching fish.

"But beyond the consideration of cruelty already taken into account, there is another view of the subject which has always operated with me against the practice of angling as a sport; and perhaps I shall most easily explain my meaning to you, by asking you a few simple questions, instead of your asking them of me. In the first place, then, what are the qualities of head or heart most called into exercise by the complete angler ?"

"I have told you what my friend Isaac says," replied Charles, evidently not unwilling to evade the question.

"Yes," said his mother, "but that is not what I ask you. I want your own opinion, not Isaac Walton's."

"It is a very difficult question," observed Charles. "I really don't know, but I think patience is most wanted, and that you know is good."

"Patience,” replied the mother, "is good in a good cause; yet I think you would hardly call patience a merit in a tyrant who should wait for the surest opportunity of entangling, and then destroying, his victim."

"Then there is perseverance," said Charles, " and that I am sure is good, at least you often tell me so."

"Of perseverance we may say the same as of patience," observed his mother. "Both are excellent when their object is good; but I very much question whether a sly kind of overreaching spirit is not more brought into action by fishing, than either of these qualities-a disposition to overcome in the end by subtlety and guile. Hence the stealthy steps and the silent movements of the angler, with the patient waiting which have been so extolled, but which to me have a treacherous sort of character, such as I have never been able to admire. You have spoken with contempt of the class of persons commonly called fishermen, that is, the men who derive their maintenance from catching fish; but to me there is something more manly and dignified in braving the storms of the ocean, or the vicissitudes of the season, in the pursuit of an honest and needful calling, than in strolling about the fields and streams, making pastime of the art by which a few harmless creatures may be beguiled to their own destruction.”

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"But the men of whom you speak," observed Charles, are among the most ignorant of the community, while their homes are frequently the most wretched of human dwellings."

"I should think," replied his mother, "that fishermen are, as a class, the poorest of any who pursue an honest and necessary occupation. Perhaps none but the poor would subject themselves to the hardships they are compelled to endure."

"Not only are they poor and ignorant," continued Charles, "but if all we hear of them be true, they have ever been the foremost to connect themselves with smugglers, and pirates, and those law