THE FISHING DAY. 



" I shall stay the reader no longer than to wish him a rainy day to read the 

 following discourse; and that, if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never 

 blow when he goes a-fishing." IZAAK WALTON. 



IT was a beautiful sentiment, whoever uttered it, that "to trans- 

 mit the first bright and early impressions of our youth free and 

 uninjured, to a remote period of life, constitutes one of the loftiest 

 prerogatives of genius." And although the task of transmitting 

 such impressions, in all their original freshness, is an impossibility, 

 yet which of us is there who will not gladly, at times, snatch a 

 minute from the hours which are engrossed in the hurry and bustle 

 of the world, to turn back to the early chapters of his " book or 

 life?" How fondly then does memory love to dwell upon the 

 pages which are written in the free, bold characters of boyhood ! 

 perhaps the only pages in that mysterious book which are written 

 without a blot ! 



Such, at least, is the case with me -, and although I well know it 

 is useless now to sigh for 



" The returning bloom 

 Of those days, alas ! gone by, 

 When I loved, each hour, I scarce knew whom, 

 And was blest, I scarce knew why " 



still the remembrance of those happy days will haunt me to the 

 last page of life's chapter ; and many a trivial and careless inci- 

 dent of my boyhood stands out in bold relief upon the tablets of the 

 mind, while graver- and more momentous passages of after years 

 have passed away and left no impression. 



Which of us can ever forget his first pony or his first gun ? 



