160 SUPPLEMENT TO THE BOOK OF THE BLACK BASS. 



grassy slopes, that gives to the art of angling its chiefest 

 charm, and presents the Bass or the trout to the angler in 

 its true and proper setting of leaves and flowers and spark- 

 ling water. If it were otherwise he would find as much 

 pleasure in fishing in the flume of the fish-culturist, or in 

 viewing the fish in the fish-monger's stall. 



Truly, the stream and its surroundings are all in all to 

 the angler. I am not much given to preaching, though I 

 come of a race of preachers ; but I can not refrain from 

 presenting to the reader the following eloquent similitude 

 and beautiful comparison between the angler's stream and 

 the stream of Life; showing the easy and natural transi- 

 tion from the love of angling to the love of nature and nat- 

 ure's God. I feel more like presenting it because it is an 

 extract from a sermon of one (Rev. Dr. H.) who has both 

 the love of God and the love of angling deeply engrafted in 

 his heart : 



"Act, therefore, while the day calls. Live its life as if life 

 were complete in it. Not that it contains all varieties of expe- 

 rience, but so joins the days before and after as to make them 

 one stream, which your spirit should wade cheerily as the trout 

 fisher wades his brook. 



" His brook is wild, because the trout love waters where boats 

 can not follow them, nor even lumber logs roll free ; \vaters that 

 twist and plunge, and shoot and eddy, with many a snag in the 

 midst and fallen tree across. 



"And there the fisher seeks them by an instinct like their own 

 loving the bends that lock the pools, the shoals that embank 

 the deep, the concealment of trackless woods, with their twilight 

 .noons and mystic noises, and every difficulty that teases him to 

 more eager quest of his water-sprites. 



" When no upward flash meets his fly he reels his line in ex- 



