AGAINST THE STREAM 



'THHE river was in high flood, and the salmon were 

 JL pressing up it. They had been out to sea, and were 

 lusty ; it was a sight to watch them leaping high into the 

 air over the first step of the salmon ladder, dashing ahead 

 with strong tail-strokes, and rising rapidly to the top of 

 the fall. Their hunger was swallowed up in love, for fishes 

 love as fishes can. To put it in another way, they were 

 making for the spawning-ground, and they were fasting. 

 One recalls that many momentous changes occur during 

 fasting periods. For it is when fasting that caterpillars 

 become butterflies, and tadpoles frogs. Thus there is a 

 biological justification of asceticism, although " Der Hunger 

 als forderndes Princip " (as the Germans phrase it in their 

 inimitable fashion) may be carried too far. There is 

 also apt to be a strange unconscious hypocrisy about it, 

 too, for the caterpillar is quietly absorbing its " fatty 

 body," and the tadpole its tail which is a luxury 

 after all. 



To return to the salmon at the fall. The lithe body, 

 less silvery than usual, shot out of the water ; then followed 

 a plucky rush amid the bubbles ; then in seven cases out of 

 ten the fish was swept back before it had cleared the second 

 rung of the ladder. It was as exciting as a racecourse. 

 The favourite cleared one barrier after another, lost energy 

 at the last, and was swept back like a log, while another 



with less dash about him cleared every one, and shot ahead 



3*4 



