76 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



did not look promising for fly-fishing. However, after persistent lashing of the 

 surface, sufficient trout were taken to give a taste all around ; then we returned. 

 A grateful odor soon arose from the frying-pan, and the cloth was laid. If the 

 early exercise had not made us ravenous, the clean linen and the luscious comes- 

 tibles that steamed upon the table,- prepared by Susan's own skillful hand, would 

 of themselves have provoked an appetite. Ah ! Messrs. Editors, if you would have 

 trout cooked as trout should be; if you would have them done to a turn; if you 

 would have them broiled, baked, fried crisp and brown, done in bread crumbs, or 

 served in any other style that tickles the palate or provokes the appetite; if you 

 would have the delicious fish unfolded in rich pink flakes like the petals of a blush 

 rose, which, dexterously lifted with your knife-point, reveals the trout's backbone 

 as white and shining as the pearly teeth of an Indian princess ; then, oh then, go 

 to Susan! I know not what her other qualifications may be. She is good looking 

 certainly. She is attentive to your wants, and obliging. She may make a capital 

 wife for some wayfaring sportsman. But if she have none of the attributes which 

 go to make man blessed, she can at least cook trout. If you wish just such a fine 

 mess of trout, Mr. Editor, just drop them (the trout) a line, as I have done, and 

 if you don't receive an answer, prompt and decisive, you deserve to be beaten with 

 your own rod. 



TROUT FISHING. 



After breakfast the piscatorial assassin in big boots wished to try his luck in 

 the stream that formed the outlet of the pond; so the party was divided, we two 

 choosing the stream and the others the boats.. It was not one of those streams 

 that go laughing and rippling under branches of trees, gurgling through grassy 

 meadows, eddying around huge prone logs, and murmuring under the alders; but 

 it would a somewhat sluggish and tortuous coarse through the brown and sloppy 

 mud flats to the ocean. There is a great deal in the surroundings and associations 

 that make trout fishing exciting and fascinating. To cast your eye ovtr the brink 

 and watch your fly as it dances on the edge of a silvery ripple: to catch the sharp 

 gleam of light just beneath, and feel a sharp tug on the instant thrill through 

 the veins like the spark from a galvanic battery ; to experience the peculiar sensa- 

 tion of that electric current as it flashes along your spine to the toes; this is the 

 ecstacy the primary delight of trout fishing. 



Next comes the sport (if the fish be a large one) of leading him tenderly 

 through all the intricate windings and avenues of his expiring agony, until you 

 have landed him drowned safely in your creel. I cannot swear, Mr. Editor, that 

 the trout feels precisely the same delights in the same degree, that you I mean that 

 anglers do, but he has doubtless some feeling in the matter. If it is not pain he 

 feels he certainly shows every symptom of astonishment, . to say the least. Then 

 he invariably gives a dying struggle or two in the basket at your side by way of 

 admonition you can hardly determine whether it be a twinge, of conscience or an- 

 other bite at the end of your line. If undubitably the latter, conscience is instantly 

 unheeded, and you address all your faculties to the task of filling your creel and 

 killing the biggest fish. 



Whatever my friend of the capacious boots may think, I do not call it sport 

 to stand in ice water up to one's hips and grow blue and numb with cold, while 

 we beat the surface with the regular swing of a pendulum, scarcely tempting a 

 single rise. Once I struck a fine large fish, and for a few moments enjoyed him 

 well. He was an active fellow, and for a while it seemed a draw game between 

 us. At last I had him alongside and passive, as I believed. The bank was steep, 



