i 
146 Fishes as Food for Man 
heavy and the sound of wheels jarring on cobbled streets grows 
painful, one’s fingers itch for the rod; one would away to the 
quiet brook among the pines, where one has fished so often. 
Every man who has ever got the love of the stream in his blood 
feels often this longing. 
‘‘Tt comes to me each year with the first breath of spring. 
There is something in the sweetness of the air, the growing 
things, the ‘robin in the greening grass’ that voices it. Duties 
that have before held in their performance something of pleas- 
ure become irksome, and practical thoughts of the day’s work 
are replaced by dreamy pictures of a tent by the side of a moun- 
tain stream—close enough to hear the water’s singing in the 
night. Two light bamboo rods rest against the tent-pole, and 
a little column of smoke rising straight up through the branches 
marks the supper fire. Jack is preparing the evening meal, 
and, as I dream, there comes to me the odor of crisply browned 
trout and sputtering bacon—was ever odor more delicious? 
I dare say that had the good Charles Lamb smelled it as I have, 
his ‘ Dissertation on Roast Pig’ would never have been written. 
But then Charles Lamb never went a-fishing as we do here in 
the west—we who have the mountains and the fresh air so 
boundlessly. 
‘And neither did Izaak Walton for that matter. He who is 
sponsor for all that is gentle in angling missed much that is 
best in the sport by living too early. He did not experience 
the exquisite pleasure of wading down mountain streams in 
supposedly water-proof boots and feeling the water trickling in 
coolingly; nor did he know the joy of casting a gaudy fly far 
ahead with a four-ounce rod, letting it drift, insect-like, over 
that black hole by the tree stump, and then feeling the sea- 
weed line slip through his fingers to the whirr of the reel. And, 
at the end of the day, supper over, he did not squat around a 
big camp-fire and light his pipe, the silent darkness of the moun- 
tains gathering round, and a basketful of willow-packed trout 
hung in the clump of pines by the tent. Izaak’s idea of fishing 
did not ccmprehend such joy. With a can of worms and a 
crude hook, he passed the day by quiet streams, threading the 
worms on his hook and thinking kindly of all things. The 
day’s meditations over, he went back to the village, and, may- 
