The Trout Streams of the Missions 137 



one might assume that angling was a very 

 worldly occupation for men whose sole avoca- 

 tion was supposed to be that of saving souls, 

 the conversion of the savage tribes of the en- 

 tire Pacific coast. But, again, there is in the 

 Bible much testimony to show that fishing was 

 far from being in disrepute. " I go a-fishing," 

 is not from Shakespeare, to whom I have heard 

 it referred. Even to-day some of the most 

 notable anglers, those who have rescued the 

 gentle art from savage hands and placed it high 

 above the prosaic and ignoble things of life, are 

 of the cloth. I recall Henry Van Dyke, Isaac 

 Sharpless of Haverford, and William Prime. 



Anglers have always borne with smiling pa- 

 tience the inference that when they spoke of fish 

 and their catches of fish, truth was not a factor 

 in the proceedings, yet was it not St. Thomas 

 who said, " We toiled all night and caught 

 nothing"? What layman would confess to this 

 and at night, too, when snipe are supposed to run 

 into bags by the light of candles in the Cabrillo 

 Mountains and all good fish feed? Yet here is 

 a great fisherman of history who boldly tells 

 the truth. He fished all night ; not half an hour, 

 or an hour, but all night, mark the difference, 

 and caught nothing. How different it would 

 have been with some of these lay traducers of 

 anglers if they had been asked " What luck? " 

 some morning. 



