A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 33 



they became, taking us into their circle as if 

 we belonged to it by right of birth, coddling 

 us as one ought never to expect to be coddled 

 save by one s own mother or grandmother. 



Ostensibly, our drive was a trout -fishing 

 trip, and part of the fun certainly was the 

 fishing. Not that we caught so many. If we 

 had seriously wished to make a score, we might 

 better have stayed at home and fished in our 

 own haunts, where we knew every pool and 

 just how and when to fish it. But it was inter 

 esting to explore new brooks, and as we never 

 failed to get enough trout for at least one 

 meal a day, what more could we wish? And 

 such brooks ! New England is surely the land 

 of beautiful brooks. They are all lovely 

 the meadow brooks, gliding silently beneath 

 the deep-tufted grasses, where the trout live 

 in shadow even at noonday, and their speckled 

 flanks are dark like the pools they lie in; the 

 pasture brooks, whose clear water is always 

 golden from the yellow sand and pebbles and 

 leaves it ripples over, and the trout are sil 

 very and pale-spotted ; the brooks of the deep 

 woods, where the foam of rapids and the spray 

 of noisy little waterfalls alternate with the 



