ODDS AND ENDS. 



I would do what I pleased, and doing what I pleased, I should have 

 my will; and having my will, I should be contented; and when one 

 is contented there is no more to be desired ; and when there is no 

 more to be desired, there is an end of it. Cervantes. 



At a recent sitting of the local brotherhood, one of them 

 was moved to murmur thus : 



"My usually placid temper is often disturbed by the 

 stupid criticisms which outside barbarians sometimes pro- 

 nounce upon our gentle pastime. Their ignorance is their 

 only excuse. But men have no business to speak dogmat- 

 ically upon a subject of which they know nothing. And 

 this is just the mental status of those who speak dispar- 

 agingly of angling and of those who engage in it. There 

 is a thousand times more of the divine element of saint- 

 liness in our harmless and healthful recreation than in the 

 dirt-worm habit of perpetually delving for filthy lucre, and 

 there is a great deal more of rock-bed common sense in a 

 man who cheerfully spends ten dollars to preserve his health 

 than in one who would rather jeopard his health than spend 

 a dollar. No honest angler would ever wet a line if there 

 were nothing in the ait besides the mere material pleasure it 

 affords him. But it has other and higher attractions 

 attractions which reach into the aesthetic realm and lift its 

 votaries up to the very border-land of Bulah." 



"We can all, I am sure," said another of our number, 

 "speak from our own personal experience on this point. 

 Two or three hours a day of the forty or fifty I pass, on 

 angling-waters every year, give me all the fishing I desire. 

 The intervening time is filled up very delightfully in leis- 

 urely rambling through the silent woods; in reclining 

 beneath some umbrageous arbor, 



'Whose green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, 



And make a checker'd shadow on the ground,' 

 and which overlooks the lake or stream on the borders of 

 which I have pitched my tent ; in clambering to the summit 



