CHAPTER III 

 IN THE TOADFISH'S SHOE 



WAS winding up my summer vaca- 

 tion with a little fishing party all by 

 myself, on a wharf whose piles st 

 deep in the swirling waters from 

 Buzzards Bay. My heavy-leaded line 

 hummed taut in the swift current; 

 my legs hung limp above the, 

 water ; my back rested comfoi 

 ably against a great timber that 

 was warm in the September sun. 

 Exciting? Of course not. Fish-' 



ing is fishing any kind of fishing is fishing to me.. 

 But the kind I am most used to, and the kind I like, 

 best, is from the edge of a wharf, where my feet 

 dangle over, where my "throw-out" line hums taut 

 over my finger, in a tide that runs swift and deep 

 and dark below me. 



, For what may you not catch in such dark waters? 

 And when there are no " bites," you can sit and wait ;' r 

 and I think that sitting and waiting with my back/ 

 against a big warm timber is just as much fun now Sj 

 it used to be when I was a boy. 

 But after all it is fish that you want when youf > 

 > 



