SPECKLED TROUT. Ill 



in crystal goblets, and as cool as if it had been 

 hatched beneath a glacier. "When the heated and 

 soiled and jaded refugee from the city first sees one 

 he feels as if he would like to turn it into his bosom 

 and let it flow through him a few hours, it suggests 

 such healing freshness and newness. How his roily 

 thoughts would run clear : how the sediment would go 

 down stream. Could he ever have an impure or an 

 unwholesome wish afterward ? The next best thing 

 he can do is to tramp along its banks and surrender 

 himself to its influence. If he reads it intently 

 enough he will, in a measure, be taking it into his 

 mind and heart, and experiencing its salutary minis- 

 trations. 



Trout streams coursed through every valley my 

 boyhood knew. I crossed them, and was often 

 lured and detained by them, on my way to and from 

 school. We bathed in them during the long sum- 

 mer noons and felt for the trout under their banks. 

 A holiday was a holiday indeed that brought permis- 

 sion to go fishing over on Rose's Brook, or up Hard- 

 scrabble or in Meeker's Hollow ; all-day trips, from 

 morning till night, through meadows and pastures 

 and beechen woods wherever the shy limpid stream 

 led. What an appetite it developed ! a hunger that 

 was fierce and aboriginal, and that the wild straw- 

 berries we plucked as we crossed the hill teased 

 rather than allayed. When but a few hours could 

 be had, gained perhaps by doing some piece of work 

 about the farm or garden in half the allotted time 



