Where Town and Country Meet 



the eager boy to gather bait out of the gar- 

 den loam. And then man and boy trudge 

 off together, rods in hand, with a sense of 

 such perfect companionship and sympathy 

 as is worth far more than its weight in 

 abandoned dignity or forfeited toil. 



It is when this temperate zone of ours, 

 and these rugged landscapes to which most 

 of us are accustomed, are all pink and white 

 and fragrant with the blossoms of orchards, 

 that angling time is at its height. Old fish- 

 ermen say that it is little use to wet a line 

 for trout until you can smell the apple 

 blossoms. I have angled for all kinds of 

 fresh-water fish, from the time when the ice 

 first went out until the law forbade, but I 

 have never had any success worth mention- 

 ing (except with the cold-blooded and 

 phlegmatic sucker) until the fruit-trees were 

 fully in bloom, and their sweetness was 

 blown into my face on puffs of air as warm 

 as a draught from a florist's conservatory. 

 Not until then does the water of our lakes 

 and streams lose enough of its winter chill 

 to wake its inhabitants fairly out of their 

 torpidity. The trout, generally speaking, 

 will not rise to a fly until June, nor pay 

 40 



