160 PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 



than the pool referred to. Others might be 

 u whipped " in vain, but this seldom failed to 

 reward the patient angler, no matter when or how 

 often it was visited. A monopoly of it for the 

 season would afford any reasonable fisherman all 

 the sport and pleasure he could desire, if he had 

 no other object in visiting these waters than to 

 fish. But they greatly mistake the temper and 

 tastes of the true angler who assume that he is 

 attracted to these quiet places simply to kill and to 

 destroy. To have the opportunity to fish consti- 

 tutes but one of the threads in the golden cord 

 which draws him to the grand old forests in whose 

 mountain streams trout and salmon " most do con- 

 gregate." If he finds pleasure in the rise and 

 strike and struggle of a mammoth fish, so also is 

 he lifted up out of the rut of common-place emo- 

 tions by his majestic surroundings by the ever- 

 shifting shadows on the mountain ; by the inces- 

 sant music of the birds ; by the never-ending mel- 

 ody of the singing waters ; by the splash and foam 

 and sparkle of the leaping cascade ; by the glint- 

 ing sun -light upon ripple and rapid ; by the shad- 

 owy depths of the impenetrable forest ; by jagged 

 rock and giant bowlder and dark pool and gliding 

 river, and a thousand other " things of beauty " 

 which remain upon the canvas of his memory 

 long after the minor incidents of fish- taking are for- 



