The Pleasures of Angling 



4 4 'TpHEY are greatly in error who suppose that all 

 J. there is of fishing is to fish; that is but the 

 body of the art. Its soul and spirit is in what 

 .the angler sees and feels; in the murmur of the 

 brook; in the music of the birds; in the simple 

 beauty of the wild flowers which peer at him from 

 every nook in the valley,. and from every sunny spot 

 on the hillside; in the moss-covered rock; in the 

 ever-shifting sunshine and shadow, which give ever- 

 varying beauty to the sides and summits of the moun- 

 tains; in the bracing atmosphere which environs 

 him; in the odor of pine and hemlock and spruce 

 and cedar forests which is sweeter to the senses of 

 a true woodsman than all the artificially compounded 

 odors which impregnate the boudoirs of artificial life; 

 in the spray of the waterfall; in the grace and curve 

 and dash of the swift-rushing torrent; in the whirl 

 of the foaming eddy; in the transparent depths of 

 the shady pool where in midsummer the speckled 

 trout and silver salmon 'most do congregate;' in re- 

 vived appetite; in the repose which comes to him 

 while reclining upon his sweet-smelling couch of 

 hemlock boughs; in the hush of the woods where 

 moon and stars shine in upon him through his open 

 tent or bark shanty; in the morning-song of the 

 robin; in the rapid-coursing blood, quickened by the 

 pure, unstinted mountain air which imparts to the 

 lungs the freshness and vigor of its own vitality; in 

 the crackling of the newly-kindled camp-fire; in the 

 restored health, in the one thousand other indescrib- 

 able and delightful realities and recollections of the 

 angler's camp lii'e on lake or river during the season 

 when it is right to go a-fishing. It is these, and not 

 alone or chiefly the mere art of catching fish, which 

 render the gentle art a source of ever-growing pleas- 

 ure. George Dawson, in the Outer's Book. 



