PLEASURES OF ANGLING.

CHAPTER I.

PREFATORY AND APOLOGETIC.

To al you that ben vertuous: gentyll: and free borne I wryte and make this fymple treatife folowynge: by whyche ye may haue the full craft of anglynge to dyfport you at your lufte, to the entent that your aege maye the more floure and the more longer to endure. [Treatife of Fyffhynge with an Angle, 1496.

HATEVER pleasure a veteran may find in occasionally recounting his deeds of valor, the rehearsal at some time becomes monotonous. So with these talks on Angling. They were well enough years ago, but they seem to the writer thereof hardly in harmony with the assumed gra

vity of "furrows," "wrinkles" and "hoary locks." Not that a true angler ever passes the line which takes him into the land of ailments and decrepitude. It is the glory of the art that its disciples never grow old. The muscles may relax and the beloved rod become a burden,

but the fire of enthusiasm kindled in youth is never extinguished. The time, however, does come when one is reluctant to parade the sources of even his innocent pleasures, except, perhaps, to those "simple wise men" whom he knows to be in sympathy with him, and who can appreciate the too generally unappreciated truth that that pleasure is only worthy the pursuit of men or of angels which "worketh no evil.”

But so many kind friends, who find delight in the pursuit of the gentle art, have importuned me to forego my purpose to be silent, and to permit them, just this once, to enjoy what they are pleased to characterize as "the pleasure they derive" from these rambling jottings, that I have reluctantly consented to gratify the few with whom I know I shall be en rapport from the start, at the hazard of displeasing the many whose highest conceptions of angling have been derived from that libelous old adage of "a rod and line, with a fool at one end and a fish at the other," and who, because of this misconception, have neither sympathy with nor respect for a recreation which the wisest and gentlest and most lovable men of all ages have recognized as the best and simplest and most effective medicine for mind and body which a kind Providence has vouchsafed erring and ailing humanity.

Although my last was my thirty-fifth annual visit to angling waters, it was anticipated with greater interest and with higher hopes of quiet enjoyment than any which had preceded it. And this, as all biography teaches, has been the experience of all true lovers of the angle. Sir Humphrey Davy retained his enthusiasm to the last. When, like Jacob, he had to lean heavily upon his staff, the author of Noctes Ambrosiana would wade his favorite streams with all the pleasure of his early manhood; and long after every other delight had waxed and waned, this remained as the veritable elixir of perpetual youth. "Kit North's" daughter (Mrs. Gordon) gives this charming picture of him when a hopeless invalid :

"And then he gathered around him, when the spring morning brought gay jets of sunshine into the little room where he lay, the relics of a youthful passion, one that with him never grew old. It was an affecting sight to see him busy, nay quite absorbed, with the fishing tackle about his bed, propped up with pillows-his noble head, yet glorious with its flowing locks, carefully combed by attentive hands, and falling on each side of his unfaded face. How neatly he picked out each elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, drawing it with trembling hand across the white coverlet, and then, replacing it in his pocket-book, he would tell, ever and anon, of the streams he used to fish `in of old, and of the deeds he had performed in his childhood and youth."

And the experience of the past is that of to-day -not among the eminent alone, but among the lowly as well, who find pure delight and refreshing recreation in quiet forests and by the side of crystal waters, with no other companions than rod and reel, singing birds and summer zephyrs. “As Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;' and so, if I may be judge, God did never make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than Angling."

But it would be an inexcusable exaggeration to assume that this strong liking grows upon those who only engage in the grosser departments of the art. The greatest enthusiast soon wearies of bait and troll as lures for pike and pickerel, or sun fish and perch. As coarse food palls on the palate, so the love of angling soon dies out unless it reaches up to the higher plane of trout and salmon, lured by the tiny fly, kept in check by the gossamer-like leader, and conquered by the skillful manipulation of the slender rod, which curves to the pressure as gracefully as the tall pine to the blast of the tempest. It is only in this higher department of the art that the angler finds the witchery of his vocation and the octegenarian the ecstacy which gives to him ever increasing pleasure and delight. If the fascinating art had no other commendation.