FLY-FISHING. 175 



said before, cast as skillfully as you can, but always delib- 

 erately and carefully. Always keep a taut line ; strike 

 quickly upon sight or touch, and play and land your fish in 

 your own way, but get him in the creel as quickly as you 

 can with safety to your tackle ; kill your fish outright be- 

 fore putting him in your basket; do not fish for count ; keep 

 your temper ; and, above all things, remember first, last 

 and all the time the most important rule in fly-fishing 

 keep out of sight of the fish if you would have him notice 

 your flies. 



A REMINISCENCE. 



Toward the close of a day in the mild September, I was 

 leisurely riding my tired mare across the ford of a narrow 

 rocky river that wound around the foot of a thickly-wooded 

 cliff, with here and there a pool in the shadow or a ripple in 

 the sun, while stretching away a mile or two across the fer- 

 tile bottom lands were fields of waving corn, fragrant clover, 

 blue-grass and broad-leaved tobacco. 



Up the stream a hundred yards away, stood, leaning over 

 the water, an old stone mill, whose lichen-covered walls and 

 moss-grown roof proclaimed its hoary age. Its old wheel 

 went rumbling on its merry round, mingling its regular, 

 rhythmic plashing with the monotone of the tumbling, rush- 

 ing waters of the dam. 



Down the stream another hundred yards, an old-time, 

 covered bridge, decrepid and gray, spanned the little river, 

 casting cool and dark shadows beneath and below. 



The sun was sinking low beyond the fields, flinging bars 

 of yellow flame through the slender strips of fleecy clouds 

 that stretched across the western portal of the steel-blue 

 sky, lighting up the crimson of the newly-dyed sumach on 

 the cliff, flashing on the foaming waters of the falls, and fes- 



