Wotton to be "a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;" or that what thus ministers medicine to the mind while it invigorates the body, should not prove attractive to all who

Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

To many this prologue may seem as irrelevant as angling seems simple to the uninitiated; but I have been lured on by my theme as I have often been by the shady banks and singing waters beside which I have cast my fly through the long summer day, in sheer forgetfulness of time and distance and all else save the consciousness of supreme enjoyment. An angler is, from necessity, a rambler; and if he wields his pen as he makes his casts, he must needs drop his thoughts as he drops his leader, whenever and however the inspiration of the moment suggests.

CHAPTER II.

ANGLING AND ANGLERS VINDICATED.

We care not who says,
And intends it dispraise,

That an angler to a fool is next neighbor.
Let him prate; what care we;

We're as honest as he,

And so let him take that for his labor!

- [Charles Cotton.

HAT good Sir Izaak Walton said two hundred years ago, of those who scoff at angling as "a heavy, contemptible, dull recreation," is quite as appropriate for their successors of to-day.

"You know, gentlemen, it is an easy thing to scoff at any art or recreation: a little wit, mixed with illnature, confidence and malice, will but though they often venture boldly, yet they are often caught, even in their own trap, according to that of Lucian, the father of the family of Scoffers:

do it;

'Lucian well skilled in scoffing, this hath writ:
Friend, that's your folly which you think your wit;
This you vent oft, void both of wit and fear,

Meaning another, when yourself you jeer!

"If to this you add what Solomon says of scoffers, that 'they are an abomination to mankind,' let him that thinks

fit scoff on, and be a scoffer still; but I account them enemies to me and to all that love angling.

"And for you that have heard many grave, serious men pity anglers, let me tell you, sir, that there are many who are taken by others to be serious and grave men, which we contemn and pity,—men that are taken to be grave because nature hath made them of a sour complexion, money-getting men, men that spend all their time first in getting and next in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busy or discontented; for such poor-rich men, we anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves so happy. No, no, sir, we enjoy a contentedness above the reach of such dispositions. * * *

“And for our ‘simplicity,' if you mean by that a harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the primitive Christians, who were, as most anglers are, quiet men and followers of peace-men that were so simply wise as not to sell their consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation and a fear to die; if you mean such men as lived in those times when there were fewer lawyers, when men might have had a lordship conveyed to them on a piece of parchment no bigger than your hand, though several sheets will not do it safely in this wiser age, I say, sir, if you take us anglers to be such simple men as I have spoken of, then myself and those of my profession will be glad to be so understood; but if by simplicity you mean to express a general defect in those that profess the excellent art of angling, I hope in time to disabuse you, and make the contrary appear so evidently, that, if you will have but patience to hear me, I shall remove all the anticipations that discourse, or time, or prejudice, have possessed you against that laudable and ancient art; for I know it is worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man."

They are greatly in error who suppose that all there is of fishing is to fish. That is but the body of the art. Its soul and spirit is in what the angler sees and feels in the murmur of the brook; in the music of the birds; in the simple beauty of the wild-flowers which peer at him from every nook in the valley and from every sunny spot on the hill-side; in the moss-covered rock; in the evershifting sunshine and shadow which give evervarying beauty to the sides and summits of the mountains; in the bracing atmosphere which environs him; in the odor of the pine and hemlock and spruce and cedar forests, which is sweeter to the senses of the true woodsman than all the artificially compounded odors which impregnate the boudoirs of artificial life; in the spray of the waterfall; in the grace and curve and dash of the swiftrushing current; in the whirl of the foaming eddy; in the transparent depths of the shaded pool where, in mid-summer, the speckled trout and silver salmon "most do congregate;" in the revived appetite; in the repose which comes to him while reclining upon his sweet-smelling couch of hemlock boughs; in the hush of the woods when moon and stars shine in upon him through his open tent or barkcovered shanty; in the morning song of the robin; in the rapid-coursing blood, quickened by the pure unstinted mountain air which imparts to the lungs

the freshness and vigor of its own vitality; in the crackling of the newly kindled camp-fire; in the restored health, and in the thousand other indescribable and delightful realities and recollections of the angler's camp-life on lake or river during the season when it is right to "go a-fishing." It is these, and not alone or chiefly the mere act of catching fish, which render the gentle art a source of constant and ever-growing pleasure. But to attain unto the full measure of delight which the pastime affords, the angler must not be merely an expert in the mechanism of the art. Unless he can, withal, appreciate the beauties of nature, and "look from nature up to nature's God," he has neither the spirit of the old masters of the angle, nor a just comprehension of its refining and ele‐ vating possibilities.

While plying his vocation in these quiet places, with no noisy babblers to break in upon his meditations, with every nerve thrilling with the intensest satisfaction, with the mind as free from rasping care as the pure atmosphere in which he is enveloped is from the miasma of the far-off lagoon, and with heart and brain in harmonious accord and sympathy with the peaceful serenity of the scene and the occasion, is it strange that sometimes he makes the old woods ring with his shouts in the very abandon of delight? It may not be that these rap