WINTER ANGLING. 259 



fly, setting the hook firmly into the thin membrane 

 which connects the two hind legs and just where the 

 tail ought to be. This left him the fullest freedom of 

 action and gave him so good a chance to fight me that 

 I never suspected him of being anything less than a 

 half-pounder. He must have jumped from the rock 

 directly on to the fly trailing behind it and been thus 

 hooked by my i strike.' Mem. — This story is true as 

 gospel, but better not tell it where you enjoy an excep- 

 tional reputation for veracity. 



"July 10th. * * * Nothing has happened! Nothing 

 ever does happen here. Delightful existence, free from 

 events ! I remember hearing Homer Martin once say that 

 it was the height of his artistic ambition to paint a picture 

 without objects. The confounded objects, he said, al- 

 ways would get wrong and destroy his best effects. How 

 far this was intended to be a humorous paradox and how 

 far the suggestion of an artistic ideal, I know not, but 

 I surely somewhere have seen a painting — from whose 

 brush I cannot say — which quite nearly fulfilled this 

 strange condition. It represented an horizon, where 

 met a cloudless, moonless, starless summer sky and a 

 waveless, almost motionless sea — these and an atmos- 

 phere. The effect was that one could hardly perceive 

 where the sea ceased and the sky began. I wonder if 

 it would not be thus with a life quite devoid of events 

 — would one be able to distinguish such from Heaven ? 



"The charm of it is that it leaves both the physical 

 and intellectual in one to develop freely. When a cow, 



