Concerning the Cruelty of Angling 



even tenor of its way. Many women 

 and children cannot bear to place a worm 

 on the hook, or even see it done. This, 

 without question, is nothing more than a 

 nervous sensitiveness. I have seen grown 

 children of fourteen (girls of course) 

 scream if they saw a harmless caterpillar, 

 spider or ant. Yet the same children would 

 placidly watch a dog run over. So that 

 the hooking of a worm or unhooking a fish 

 is merely a question of habit, which by 

 practice soon becomes a pleasure that is, 

 if done for a purpose and not wanton mis- 

 chief. The famous verse of Byron on the 

 venerable Walton, in which he says that he 

 ought to have a hook in his gullet, depends 

 entirely upon how we look on the question, 

 how the saying fits, as it were. The one 

 spending nearly a century of life, helping 

 others by word, deed and thought, whose 

 every virtue, we read, all men knew ; on the 

 other hand, a short, dissipated, selfish life, 

 spreading misery to all who came in con- 

 tact, even to those who befriended him. 



