SPECKLED TROUT 95 



h^, feels as if he would like to turn it into his bosom 

 and let it flow through him a few hours, it suggests 

 such healing freshness and newness. How his roily 

 thoughts would run clear; how the sediment would 

 go down-stream ! Could he ever have an impure or 

 an unwholesome wish afterward? The next best 

 thing he can do is to tramp along its banks and 

 surrender himself to its influence. If he reads it 

 intently enough, he will, in a measure, be taking it 

 into his mind and heart, and experiencing its salu- 

 tary ministrations. 



Trout streams coursed through every valley my 

 boyhood knew. I crossed them, and was often 

 lured and detained by them, on my w^ay to and from 

 school. We bathed in them during the long sum- 

 mer noons, and felt for the trout under their banks. 

 A holiday was a holiday indeed that brought permis- 

 sion to go fishing over on Rose's Brook, or up Hard- 

 scrabble, or in Meeker's Hollow; all-day trips, from 

 morning till night, through meadows and pastures 

 and beechen woods, wherever the shy, limpid stream 

 led. What an appetite it developed ! a hunger that 

 was fierce and aboriginal, and that the wild straw- 

 berries we plucked as we crossed the hill teased 

 rather than allayed. When but a few hours could 

 be had, gained perhaps by doing some piece of work 

 about the farm or garden in half the allotted time, 

 the little creek that headed in the paternal domain 

 was handy; when half a day was at one's disposal, 

 there were the hemlocks, less than a mile distant, 

 with their loitering, meditative, log-impeded stream 



