CHAPTER VI.

HOBBIES AND SOME OF THEIR RIDERS.

The variety and contrary choices that men make in the world argue that the same thing is not good to every man alike. This variety of pursuits shows that every one does not place his happiness in the same thing.- [Locke.

T is not true that " every man has his hobby." The great mass of men have no special source of pleasurable diversion. They are content to walk the weary treadmill of life in stoical monotony, if they can but have the barren assurance that "their oil and their wine increaseth." But with the man who has his "hobby" it is not so. Equally with others, he has respect unto his larder and his bank account, and is as willing as the most thoroughly devoted man of business to have "both ends meet" seasonably and symmetrically. He has no less zeal or energy, and is quite as industrious and thrifty as his neighbor; but through the rift in the cloud of his daily struggle, he catches frequent glimpses of his beloved "hobby," and his heart throbs and his step becomes

elastic as the hour approaches when he can “take a ride." It may be that the "hobby" is trotted out daily in the form of a rose-bud, a sheet of music, the framework of some impracticable piece of mechanism, an unsolvable problem in mathematics, or a newly-devised "fly," lovingly fondled in anticipation of its grand achievements upon some remote sunny holiday, when the dear "hobby" shall prance by the side of a murmuring meadow brook or a babbling mountain rivulet. However, wherever or whenever ridden, (whether with every sunset or with the waning moon, or only once a year when trout and salmon are in season,) it is well to have a harmless "hobby" standing in some cozy nook of the imagination, to be led out at will, and to be straddled and ridden when the muscles ache, when the brain is weary and when the heart is sad. The man without a "hobby" may be a good citizen and an honest fellow, but he can have but few golden threads running through the web or woof of his monotonous existence.

Of all the "hobbies" known to advanced civilization, none is more harmless, none more exbilarating, none more healthful and none which ambles more gently than that of the angler. The months of grooming of anticipation and of preparation are only less delightful than the pleasurable

emotions experienced when, fully mounted, the happy rider "whips" his way through trout-brook and salmon-pool, buoyant in spirit, inhaling new life and vigor with every breath of the pure mountain air which environs him, with his heart pulsating as if every drop of blood was an electric battery, with every nerve thrilled by the rush and swirl preluding the coveted "strike," with the well-poised line, tensioned by the "pull" of a twenty pound salmon, droning out æolian music, and with every nerve and fibre thrumming an accompaniment, embodying more of entrancing melody than ever Strauss or Paganini dreamed of. With such a "hobby," susceptible of exciting such pleasurable emotions, upon which to take an occasional ramble through "the green pastures and beside the still waters" of life, should it be deemed strange that anglers are merry men, contemplative philosophers and enthusiasts in their love of all that is grand and beautiful and sublime in nature?

I am glad to know that the number who ride this harmless "hobby" is constantly increasing. When men through eleven months of weary toil and labor can find pleasure in anticipating the coming of the month "of all the year the best," when they will find inexpressible delectation in admiring the graceful movements of the swaying forest, in reposing beneath its genial shades, in list

ening to the music of bird and brook and mountain torrent, and in casting for speckled trout or silver salmon in pool or rivulet, they will not err who write them down as happier men than their neighbors, and as all the better for this happiness.

There is enough in the minor departments of angling to render it attractive. Sea and lake, as well as brook and river, afford pleasant pastime, but salmon fishing is confessedly the highest round in the ladder, whether because of the great weight, strength and beauty of the fish, the skill required to lure it to the fly, to strike it when lured, or to kill it when struck. No other fish is so shy, so kingly, or so full of game. To kill a thirty or forty pound salmon, is to graduate with all the honors. If but a comparatively few Americans, masters of every other department of the art, have attained unto this coveted dignity, it is from want of opportunity rather than from want of skill. We have no salmon rivers within our territory (where the fish will take the fly) this side the Rocky Mountains. Hence the great mass of our anglers, however skilled and enthusiastic, have deemed themselves to have reached the greatest available elevation in the art when they have killed a four, six, eight or ten pound trout. The single step forward can only be taken by a journey to Oregon or California, or by a trip to the Coast

of Labrador or the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, where the restrictions are such that only a fortunate few are able to gratify their ambitious longings. There are probably not more than a dozen men in the State of New York, outside the city, who have killed a salmon. I can remember but a single person in our immediate neighborhood, beside myself, who has been so fortunate. DEAN SAGE, late of Cohoes, a young gentleman of rare skill with rod and reel and a most enthusiastic angler, had his first fortnight on a salmon river in July. It was a fortnight of exquisite pleasure, the recollection of which will make the present summer ever memorable in his log-book of years. There are, perhaps, a score or two in New York, and as many more scattered from Portland to New Orleans, who know what it is to be electrified by the "rise" of a thirty pound fish. But the number is annually increasing, and a great multitude in the next generation -if salmon breeding is pushed as it should be— will be able to enter into the feelings of grand old Christopher North when he gently caressed his pet salmon-fly on his death-bed.

It is different in the Provinces. There are enthusiastic salmon fishers in every town, from Toronto to Halifax. It was my great pleasure, during my recent visit to St. John, to form the acquaintance of some of the best of them. And I