10 PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 



They are greatly in error who suppose that all 

 there is of fishing is to fish. That is but the body 

 of the art. Its soul and spirit is in what the angler 

 sees and feels in the murmur of the brook ; in 

 the music of the birds ; in the simple beauty of the 

 wild-flowers which peer at him from every nook 

 in the valley and from every sunny spot on the 

 hill-side ; in the moss-covered rock ; in the ever- 

 shifting sunshine and shadow which give ever- 

 varying beauty to the sides and summits of the 

 mountains ; in the bracing atmosphere which en- 

 virons him ; in the odor of the pine and hemlock 

 and spruce and cedar forests, which is sweeter to 

 the senses of the true woodsman than all the arti- 

 ficially compounded odors which impregnate the 

 boudoirs of artificial life ; in the spray of the water- 

 fall ; in the grace and curve and dash of the swift- 

 rushing current ; in the whirl of the foaming eddy ; 

 in the transparent depths of the shaded pool where, 

 in mid-summer, the speckled trout and silver salm- 

 on "most do congregate ;" in the revived appetite ; 

 in the repose which comes to him while reclining 

 upon his sweet-smelling couch of hemlock boughs ; 

 in the hush of the woods when moon and stars 

 shine in upon him through his open tent or bark- 

 oovered shanty ; in the morning song of the robin ; 

 in the rapid-coursing blood, quickened by the pure 

 unstinted mountain air which imparts to the lungs 



