TEACHING A COMMUNITY 
BY G.°Wi. 
Green Castle, Ind., is the seat of De 
Pauw University, the great Methodist 
college of the West, and one would as 
much expect to find atheists, deists 
and the whole galaxy of unbelievers 
among its resident population, as fish- 
ermen. Hardly had the last snow of 
the past cold winter disappeared before 
the warm spring sun, when I began to 
hear fish talk, and to see more or less 
beginning to get ready to go a-fishing 
on the part of several of its most influ- 
ential citizens. But as arod was called 
a pole, and there sprung up a sudden 
demand for ro cent lines, fully equipped 
with hook, sinker and bob, it became 
self-evident the science of angling was 
not taught in the university. It soon 
became apparent, when the average cit- 
izen shouldered his pole, took up his 
can of worms, or bucket of minnows, 
and started for the stream (Big Walnut, 
about a mile from town) that he went 
after meat. The idea that sport could 
enter into and become the all-absorb- 
ing incentive, the ruling passion, in 
the day’s outing, was beyond his wild- 
est dreams. Had the economy of nature 
been so arranged that he could have 
knocked the fish off the limbs of the 
trees on the banks with his pole, which 
was no doubt better adapted to that 
purpose than angling, the object of his 
going a-fishing would the sooner have 
been attained, and he, the chump fish- 
erman, the more highly pleased with 
the result. 
The idea of sport being thus swal- 
lowed up in that of meat, necessarily 
precluded all thought of returning to 
the water the small fry, hence every- 
thing from three inches up was held as 
TO FEY 
FISH—THE FISH HOG: 
GRIFFIN. 
meat and went to swell the day’s catch. 
The crude tackle, the ‘* get) there 
manner of using it, but, above all, the 
bull-dog idea of tenaciously holding on 
to everything coming to the hook, re- 
gardless of future supply and demand, 
was more than one making any claim 
to true angling could stand by and see 
without a protest. And right here is 
when I made ‘‘a ass” of myself. I 
use this expression of the lamented A. 
Ward, because I regard it as a sort of 
superlative tense of an ass. It comes, 
sooner or later, to all men to make the 
crowning mistake of their lives, and, 
until I make a greater, I shall think 
the supreme effort of my life in this 
respect was put forth in the month of 
Jane; A. D., 1895: 
I could have protested against this 
unsportsmanlike style of taking bass, 
and the slaughter of quarter and half- 
pound fish, and discharged my whole 
duty toward my _ fellow-man, then 
quietly took my way to the stream with 
rod and flies, and had miles of beautiful 
pools and bouldered riffles to myself, 
and left the bungling pole fishermen to 
their wallow. 
But no, I must needs give them my 
hand, and lead them up to the high 
and nobler plains of artistic angling, 
until now the populace is all agog, 
the fever has reached all classes and 
conditions of: mankind, and the family 
that cannot produce ‘‘on call ”’ one or 
more chuckers of the bug have lost caste 
in its neighborhood. When the water 
is in condition, not a day passes that it 
is not whipped by ten or fifteen rods. 
With the majority, the hoggish instinct 
to keep small bass still lingers; with 
