FROM "GAME FISH OF THE NORTH." 221 



home darling. How he flashes upon the sight as he 

 grasps the spurious insect, and turns down with a quick 

 little slap of the tail ! How he darts hither and thither 

 when he finds he is hooked ! How persistently he 

 struggles till enveloped in the net ! And then with 

 what heart-rending sighs he breathes away his life ! 

 Who does not love the lovely trout ? With eye as deep 

 and melting, skin as rich and soft, and ways as wildly 

 wilful as angelic woman who loves not one loves not 

 the other. Who would not win the one cares not to 

 win the other. Strange that man should "kill the 

 thing he loves ;" but if to possess them kills them, he 

 must kill. If women, like the Ephemerce, died, as they 

 often do, in their love, we should still love them. Such 

 is man ; do not think I praise him. No one kills fish 

 for the pleasure of killing ; but they cannot live out of 

 water, nor we in it, therefore one of us must die. 



The man who kills to kill, who is not satisfied with 

 reasonable sport, who slays unfairly or out of season, 

 who adds one wanton pang, that man receives the con- 

 tempt of all good sportsmen and deserves the felon's 

 doom. Of such there are but few. 



We seek this, our favorite fish, in early spring, when 

 the ice has just melted, and the cold winds remind 

 one forcibly of bleak December, and when we find him 

 in the salt streams, especially of Long Island and 

 Cape Cod ; but we love most to follow him in the early 

 summer, along the merry streams of old Orange, or 

 the mountain brooks of Sullivan county; where the 



