78 Recreations of a Sportsman 



in the game I knew him to be a six or seven 

 pounder; indeed the bending, leaping rod, the 

 tension of the line, the staccato of the silver- 

 tongued reel all told of a fish "very like a whale," 

 and the fear of possible loss in the presence of 

 the man who really owned him began to creep 

 into my soul. I even began to imagine what 

 he would say, as the fish was now racing down- 

 stream, and he was quietly following me. He 

 would say perhaps, " I 'm sorry you lost him, as 

 I might have brought him in." 



So, caution flying at the peak, I played my 

 trout, humored him when he turned on me, 

 turned the little reel as delicately as I knew, 

 fed him with line when he would have it, and 

 breathed hard when he went into the air ever 

 and anon to invoke the gods of Lassen, hanging 

 omnipresent in air, not to desert him. 



It is an old, old story, the joys of an angler 

 in these all-too-fleeting moments. It may be 

 absurd for a full-grown man, who responds to 

 the big things of life, who, mayhap, has a fond- 

 ness for desperate chances, to be seen playing 

 a six or eight-pound something, at the end of a 

 twelve-foot, six-ounce split bamboo, but he owns 

 up to the weakness, glories in it, and finds con- 

 solation, when caught in the act, in the solace 

 of Walton : " Angling is somewhat like poetry, 

 men are to be born so." Then, again, the trout 

 has all the advantage. Perhaps your angler of 



