The American Angrier 



membered the sand bar well down 

 toward its lower end, and so playing my 

 fish cautiously from the bank until I 

 reached a place where I could wade, I 

 coaxed him along, pretty well tired out 

 by this time, until the sand bar was 

 reached, and then I towed him ashore 

 and fell on him. He was a beauty of 

 nearly a pound and a half. 



Then I returned to my first position 

 for another cast, and almost immedi- 

 ately struck another, the mate of the 

 first. I secured him in the same way. 

 A third time I tried it, and struck still 

 another, the largest of the three I will 

 always believe, but failed to hook him. 

 After that not another trout would rise, 

 and I trudged home with few fish but a 

 heavy basket. Those two fish weighed 

 2 lbs. lo ozs. on the steelyard an hour 

 after they were taken, and they meas- 

 ured fourteen inches each. But that 

 great pool produced many as large dur- 

 ing that season. I saw one taken by a 

 local angler which weighed several 

 ounces over 2 lbs. 



One of the lately arrived guests at our 

 boarding house was an Episcopal 

 clergyman, a Doctor of Divinity, quite 

 Anglican in his ways. Ignorant of 

 my habits, he asked me one day if I 

 knew what a delightful sport was fish- 

 ing with the fly. He said it was quite 

 gentlemanly and a suitable indulgence 

 for a clergyman, and that he himself 

 had engaged in it once or twice. He 

 wondered if the Beaverkill might not be 

 a fit stream for the practice of this 

 pleasant art, and intimated that he 

 would be glad to initiate me into its 

 mysteries. I assured him that I would 

 be delighted, and the very next after- 

 noon we started forth. I told him I 

 knew the way to the river and led him 

 to it by the short cut, a rough scramble 

 through the woods. When we had 

 rigged our rods I saw at once that my 



learned friend was a fisherman in theory 

 rather than by practice, and that wading 

 the Beaverkill was a new sort of work 

 for him. We had not gone far before a 

 smart little shower came up, and I 

 sought refuge under the thick branches 

 of a beech, but the Doctor, who had not 

 yet raised a trout, scorning the shelter 

 to which I invited him, floundered 

 along, and I presently lost sight of him. 

 The shower quickly ceased and I has- 

 tened after my companion. I could see 

 nothing of him, and, after passing a 

 well-known path which led from the 

 road to the river, I concluded that he 

 must have taken it and gone home. 



But as my favorite evening hour was 

 near, and the slight shower had made 

 the river very tempting, I kept on my 

 way and came home after dark with a 

 half dozen fine fish. When I reached 

 the house the first person to meet me 

 was the Doctor's wife with wrath in her 

 eye. Evidently something was wrong. 



" I cannot understand," she broke 

 fotth, " why you gentlemen should want 

 to go wading in that horrid river. If 

 you want to fish, why can you not be 

 satisfied to take a boat and go out on 

 the lake in a respectable way ?" 



I was humbled, alarmed and also per- 

 plexed. What had happened ? Against 

 my protests the Doctor had left me, 

 vigorously thrashing the stream in the 

 rain. Of course he did not catch any- 

 thing, but this hardl)^ explained mat- 

 ters. I sought information from a more 

 unprejudiced source and found it. Just 

 above where I sat down under the tree 

 is a rather troublesome rift, and near 

 the bank where a brook comes in there 

 is a great pot hole, a fine place for a 

 good trout but not a nice place to wade 

 into. The good Doctor, disgusted at 

 the unwillingness of the fish to rise to 

 his splashing flies, had resolved to go 

 home. He had tried to cross the stream. 



