WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 29 



Gate, have wandered through tho 'garden of the gods/ and 

 taken in all the exquisite beauty and majestic grandeur of the 

 Yosemite Valley, but my soul was never so th tilled as dur- 

 ing these never-to-be-forgotten nights of ecstacy and beauty 

 at the foot of Big Tnpper, when, superadded to what I saw 

 and felt, my two companions made the dense solitude vocal 

 with 'the concord of sweet sounds,' breathed from cornet 

 and flute, played with a sweetness and harmony which 

 proved them as much the masters of those instruments as 

 they wore of Greek and beile-lettres and of rod and reel. 

 Much that I have seen and enjoyed is forgotten, but this 

 memory of thirty years ago remains as fresh and vivid as 

 any pleasurable emotion that has come to me within the past 

 fortnight. Oh, no; as our respected chronicler of the pleas- 

 ures oP our favorite pastime has said, 'it is not all of fishing 

 to fish,' and he who thinks so has not yet learned the first letter 

 in the alphabet of the true angler. [Ripples of applause.] 



"Did some one ask me what sport we had? In those days 

 it required more skill to keep from 'striking' than to get a 

 'rise.' If we only went to fish, we need not then to have 

 penetrated into the heart of the forest to get what we went 

 for. But fishing was but an incident then as always. The 

 freedom, the rest, the recuperation, the ten thousand delights 

 which come to mind and heart from mountain and river and 

 lake and forest, infinitely more than the mere act of taking 

 nsh, constituted and still constitute the chief charm of 

 these summer rambles. As my friend here has said before me, 

 among the multitude of blessings vouchsafed me by a kind 

 Providence, I count my passion for this delightful pastime 

 as chief. If not a better, I am sure I have been a happier 

 man, because, during all my long life, I have found pleasure 

 in the woods and loved to go a-fishing." ["So say we, all 

 uf us," and a hearty hand-shake all round followed the re- 

 hearsal of this pleasant memory. It was the preface to 

 many another like recital, which held the merry-hearted 

 coterie together far into the "wee, sma' hours ayont the twal, " 

 and which I may make "of record" before "reeling up" 

 these rambling "Talks on Summer Pastimes."] 



