86 THE AMERICAN TROUT. 
ebbing away, his breath growing shorter, his struggles 
fainter! Aad when he has grown stiff in death, how 
proudly sad we feel over a noble career cut short too 
•soon ! 
The man who kills to kill, who is not satisfied with 
reasonable sport, who slays unfairly or out of season, 
who adds one wanton pang, that man receives the con- 
tempt of all good sportsmen and deserves the felon's 
doom. Of such there are but few. 
We seek this, our favorite fish, in early Spring, when 
the ice has just melted, and the cold winds remind one 
forcibly of bleak December, and when we find him in 
the salt water streams, especially of Long Island and 
Cape Cod ; but we love most to follow him in the early 
Summer, along the merry streams of old Orange, or the 
mountain brooks of Sullivan County. Where the air is 
full of gladness, and the trees are heavy with foliage — 
where the birds are singing upon every bough, and the 
grass is redolent of violets and early flowers. There we 
wade the cold brooks, the leaf}^ branches bowing us a 
welcome as we pass — the water rippling over the hidden 
rocks, and telling us, in its wayward way, of the fine fish 
it carries in its bosom. With creel upon our shoulder and 
rod in hand, we reck not of the hours, and only when 
the sinking sun warns of the approaching darkness, do 
we seek, with sharpened appetite, the hos|)itable country 
inn, and the comfortable supper that our prey will fur- 
nish forth. 
The brooks of Long Island, especially on the south- 
ern shore, abound with trout. But they are few in com- 
parison with the hordes that once swarmed in the 
