WILD PASTURES 



low perch even, to come up and eat out 

 of your hand. I have watched a big 

 horn-pout lumbering about in the shady 

 depths for an hour and seen him care- 

 fully inspect a hookless worm which I 

 had dropped to him, before he ate it, 

 noting with glee the gravity and self- 

 importance with which he finally decided 

 that it was all right and that he would 

 confer a favor upon it by swallowing it 

 whole. Yet never once have I seen or 

 laid hands on an eel in fresh water. 

 There he goes his own mysterious way 

 among the rock crevices and along the 

 mud of the ultimate depths. The other 

 fishes of the brook travel in schools; he 

 goes alone. They were spawned up 

 stream; he was born on the sands of 

 the fishing banks, a hundred miles off 

 shore. He came upstream as a young 

 eel squirming through dams that shut 

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