266 FISHING WITH THE FLY. 



sluggish, muddy streams within the hearing of great 

 towns, redolent of odors that are bred and disseminated 

 where humanity is massed between walls of brick and 

 mortar, or even from a perfect fish preserve, where 

 everything is artificial except the water ; or if the be- 

 ginning of fishing was making the first cast and the 

 end the creeling of the last fish, would the gentle art 

 under such conditions have been a theme for the poet's 

 pen, a subject for the artist's brush, or a topic for the 

 interesting story during the centuries that have passed 

 since the first line was written, or the first words sung ? 

 I think not. 



Fishing for the fish alone would not have inspired 

 Dame Juliana Berners, Izaak Walton, Charles Cotton, 

 Sir Humphry Davy, John Bunyan, Sir Walter Scott, 

 " Christopher North," and other and more modern 

 writers to tell of the peace, the quiet, the health and the 

 pleasure to be gained in the pursuit of this pastime. 



The skill exercised and the delicate tackle used by a 

 past master of the art would have been unnecessary to 

 cultivate or fashion, solely to supply the brain with 

 food through the alimentary canal. 



An angler's brain is fed by absorption as well as by 

 assimilation. 



There might be reason in calling a fisherman with 

 an eye simply to the catching of fish, a "lover of cruel 

 sport," but the cruelty would be of the same kind, but 

 in a less degree, as that displayed by the butcher who 

 supplies our tables with beef and mutton. 



