sorrow. I am glad in my heart I came a-fishing. This is sport. But 

 I am fishless though that is a trifle not worth mentioning. 



There is another affable way of fishing I have often practiced and 

 which I can commend. The modus operand! is as follows : Take your 

 pole across your shoulder, let the line dangle so the hook is free to catch 

 in the limbs of the trees and bushes as you walk along. The extracting 

 of the hook will occupy your hands; for "Satan finds some work for 

 idle hands to do:" and so I always think it wise to leave the line dangle 

 and keep my hands employed. This has saved me from many a snare. 

 Thus fortified for the fishing voyage, I go boldly near a stream. I walk 

 along its banks. I watch the shimmer on the stream, and the shadows 

 flung in the waters by the banks. A bunch of white flags sometimes 

 (and what lily-white blosoms these water-loving flags wear!) and some- 

 times a bank of sand touches the water, and is covered with bluebells 

 which cast their lovely shadows in the stream. God is the first of the 

 photographers. The smell of damp earth is in my nostrils, and the odor 

 of the mints on which I walk. A bird flings across my face so that his 

 wings almost touch me as he whirs by, and a redbird whistles as if he 

 were joking with you. And the swallows circle with an almost musical 

 motion, and the fair clouds lie listless as if absent on a day of quiet, and 

 the hill climbs up from the stream's edge into a tangle of thicket and 

 brier and moss, and the leap of some brave tree going toward the light 

 with ragged branches, or a meadow smiles across the stream, and a 

 woodland clouds with its green against the sky across the field. And I 

 throw the rod down and forget it and wander smiling along as a pair of 

 lovers, and gather flowers and find a red clover alone and gather it out 

 of sheer courtesy, or surprise, or love (what matters which?). Or a 

 bird's nest decoys me through the dark deeps of woods. And the 

 stream laughs along. And you, looking at the sky, step unwittingly into 

 its waters and like the souse of the water in your shoes. Fishermen of 

 high grade are careless of wet feet ; and besides, dew is in the thicket 

 and on the grass, and drops from the trees, and how can you help hav- 

 ing wet feet ? And not to have them is to play at fishing. Let us be 

 in earnest whatever we do. Let us not act at fishing ; let us fish. I 

 always do. Wade across the stream often if you can without total im- 

 mersion. That will bring you into contact with the native element of fish, 

 and may give you the smell of their scales ; but you can get wet, and 

 that is desirable, for you feel fishy and the feeling is the main thing in 

 fishing. I follow the winding of the stream. I go and caress the 



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