Troxit on Darbless HooKs 89 



Great minds, male and female, have gentle hearts. 

 Izaak Walton handled a frog as if he loved him. 

 Cowper would not unnecessarily hurt a worm. Lin- 

 coln upset his White House Cabinet to rescue a mother 

 pig from a mire. Webster neglected the Supreme 

 Court to replace a baby robin that had fallen from its 

 nest. Moses, John the Divine, Washington, Thoreau, 

 Audubon, Wilson, and even Napoleon and Caesar the 

 mighty mankillers were all of tender hearts, and all 

 of these were Anglers. Christ was only a fisher of 

 men, but He loved and associated with the fishers of 

 fishes. Walton, the father of fishers and fishing, 

 angled for the habits of fishes more than for their 

 hides. The capture of a fish was insignificantly inci- 

 dental to the main notion of his hours abroad his 

 divine love of the waters, the fields, the meadows, the 

 skies, the trees, and God's beautiful things that inhabit 

 these. 'Tis the soul we seek to replenish, not the creel. 

 So a Long Island dairyman's daughter views the 

 theme, and she handles the mother and baby trout as 

 if she loved them. Salvelinus fontinalis, little salmon 

 of the streams, the Angler's dearly beloved brook 

 trout this is the dairymaid's special delight. She 

 breeds these rainbow-hued beauties and broods over 

 them, she feeds and fondles them, and they are to 

 her what David's holy, fleecy flock were to him his 

 blessed charge by heavenly day and cardinal care at 

 night. They feed from her hand, and play like 

 kittens with her fingers. Cleopatra cleaved her fishes 

 with a murderous hand and hook. Audrey cuddles 

 her trout with a magnanimous mind and heart. 



The trout, with all its famous beauty of color, grace, 

 and outline, all its army of admirers, all the glory of its 

 aqua-fairyland habitat, all its seeming gentility of 



