grieve me. I fear there will be no fishermen In heaven except our 

 elderly friend Peter, who. being himself a fisherman, may in fellow 

 feeling let them slip through his fingers after the manner of fish. 



But not to continue this secular pursuit of discovering such depravi- 

 ties (of which there would be no end), save so as to show why my virtue 

 is always at white heat however cold the thermometer may be and 

 that I will not be decoyed irito a sport which serves, if indulged in with 

 sufficient persistency, to eradicate the last faint vestige of truthfulness 

 from the heart of the votary. Truth must still have an ad- 

 vocate. I will not lie except at intervals and under severe 

 provocation ; and so I will not fish 



1 start in a leisurely fashion ; for haste is foe to good 

 fishing. To have a deliberate air is impressive to fish. 

 1 make haste slowly therefore. I am not eager to be 

 known as starting on a voyage of fishing ; for such 

 enterprise engenders hallucinations of imagination as 

 to the results of your expedition (in the minds of 

 the populace). I move out calmly, like a ship 

 starting from its harbor toward high seas. A 

 sweet lady I know smiles at me going, with a touch 

 of irony in her face, and a boy picking up chips 

 on the beach pauses (much to his content, for he 

 does not admire work) in his efforts, to give me a 

 quizzical look, and a girl smiles at me with a wave 

 of hand good to look upon; and I go past the board 

 walk where the beech- trees grow and cast gentle 

 shadows, and down the lane of sand hills peaked with 

 pines, and loiter along with scant precipitancy as befits 

 a man going on such solemn business as fishing; for as 

 Ike Walton has shown, fishing is the soul of solemnity, and 

 is after all no sport, but life's real and serious business. We 

 must not therefore approach such vocation with the least spirit of levity. 

 I sight the river with reeds growing solid green along far banks where 

 the stream bends in gentle curves like a boat's prow, and rest my heart 

 in taking a long breathing view of the lake whose waters tilt against the 

 sky green as bulk glass, and let the cool wind from its bosom lave me 

 as if it were a wave washing some point of shore; and then I bethink 

 me that I have no bait nor any line nor any rod, and turn back in medi- 

 tative mood so as not to appear disconcerted. I reach home, take these 



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