NOT ALL OF FISHING TO FISH. 267 



To an angler the pleasures of the rod and reel are 

 far-reaching and have no boundary save when the mind 

 ceases to anticipate and the brain to remember. I have 

 had the grandest sport on a midwinter's night with the 

 snow piled high outside and. the north wind roaring 

 down the chimney, while I sat with my feet to the blaze 

 on the hearth, holding in my hand an old fly-book. 

 The smoke from my lighted pipe, aided by imagina- 

 tion, contained rod, fish, creel, odorous balsam, droop- 

 ing hemlock and purling brook or ruffled lake. I 

 seemed to hear the twittering birds, leaves rustled by the 

 wind, and the music of running water, while the incense 

 of wild flowers saluted my nostrils. The heat of the 

 fire was but the warm rays of the sun and the crackle 

 of the burning wood the noise of the forest. Thus 

 streams that I have fished once or twice have been 

 fished a score of times. 



I had nothing to show for the later fishings, but I 

 could feel that God was good and my memory unim- 

 paired. The fish in the pipe-smoke has been as active 

 as was the fish in the water, and afforded as fine play. 

 My reel has clicked as merrily in the half-dream as on 

 the rod in the long ago, and my rod has bent to the 

 play of the fish as though it were in my hand instead 

 of lying flat on a shelf in a cool room up-stairs. I 

 have had in my musings all the pleasure of actual fish- 

 ing, everything but the fish in the flesh. 



When Winter comes and the ravages in tackle have 

 been repaired and all is in perfect order for another 



