26 FISHING IN EDEN 



like E. T. Reed's prehistoric men, bird and squirrel 

 cages, and all the thousand and one things we never 

 thought for a moment of buying. The great 

 pleasure to us consisted in finding the material 

 required, whether it was a hockey stick out of the 

 wood, or a piece of tin from the Smith's back-yard, 

 and in carving them and shaping them to our 

 purpose by the firelight. Tin made excellent 

 arrowheads ! 



And so the apprenticeship went on, and the setting 

 of night lines created an ambition to possess a real 

 fishing-rod and net. 



My earliest recollection of actually handling a rod 

 was at old Dick Rudd's door porch. This rod 

 appeared to me to be a wonderful weapon, and of 

 great length, for the top reached to his bedroom 

 window when the butt rested on the paving stones 

 below. Old Dick's cottage still stands, and has not 

 altered much, I suspect, but I notice now that the 

 bedroom window is not above nine or ten measured 

 feet from the ground. His net was nearly as long 

 as his rod, and the idea of Dick being the greatest 

 fisherman of that time lingers in my mind still. He 

 did not appear to do anything else but fish, and there 

 was always an attraction and mystery about him to 

 me as a lad. My eyes used to follow him wistfully 

 as I saw him going off through the woods, and past 



