WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 31 



ence of those who have only felt the excitement incident to 

 the capture of fish with the rougher implements of the craft. 

 "Still -fishing" with bait, or trolling with "spoon" or min- 

 now is better than no fishing, as " 'tis better to have loved 

 and lost than never to have loved at all. " But that sort of 

 fishing never reaches to the dignity of a passion. The out- 

 ing necessarv to engage in it may be missed, but no great 

 disappointment will be felt if circumstances compel a resort 

 to some other mode of diversion. But with those who have 

 Ions* enjoyed the ecstasy of fly-casting it is not so. To be 

 satisfying, their ' 'vacation" must carry them to trout, bass, 

 grayling or salmon waters. No other harmless or healthful 

 recreation takes so strong a hold upon one's spirit or imagi- 

 nation, because there is no other which meets so fully the 

 mental, physical and esthetic demands of mind and heart. 

 In following the brooks and rivers which wend their way 

 through forest and mountain and valley, where solitude has 

 her abode and where rustling leaves and singing birds and 

 the rippling music of running waters fill the air with per- 

 petual melody, the appreciative angler, "born so," as good 

 old Izaak has it, finds mental repose, physical invigoration, 

 "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the gar- 

 ment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." It is because 

 these qualities inhere in the pastime are identical with and 

 inseparable from it that it is so irresistibly fascinating to 

 its votaries. They can be proffered no substitute, because, 

 Hke matchless beauty, "only itself can b3 its parallel." 



On the occasion to which I have referred, my usual two 

 weeks' visit to the ' 'spring holes" between Ray Brook and 

 Setting Pole Rapids, where I have had such sport as lifted 

 me into the seventh heaven of delectation, was reduced to 

 a three-days' sojourn where the whistle of the locomo- 

 tive could be heard, and where, if need be, a telegraph mes- 

 sage could reach me. It was, I thought, a pitiful substitute 

 for my old-time free and easy swing in the grand old woods, 

 where, for so many years, a score of good fellows constituted 

 the sum total of intruders upon its then unbroken solitude. 

 Ah, those were days to be remembered when trout were 



