230 PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 



An editor's life is neither the best nor the worst 

 in which to cultivate this rare gift. There are 

 those in the profession who can so concentrate their 

 thoughts that even the pertinacious pleadings of a 

 score of office-seekers cannot tangle the thread of 

 their meditations; and sometimes even the least 

 gifted among us have to throw off sentences amid 

 such persistent din that Bedlam itself would seem 

 the abode of silence. What little of the art came 

 to me by nature and compulsory practice has been 

 strengthened by the opportunities for silent medi- 

 tation afforded by the habit of angling. My guide, 

 who knew and humored my moods, was not, there- 

 fore, greatly startled when, in passing the approach 

 to Cold brook, I broke the long silence with the 

 very unintelligible exclamation: "He was a cun- 

 ning old rat." It was the climax of a half hour's 

 cogitation upon the protracted waiting and watch- 

 ing which finally resulted in the capture of the 

 three-pound trout in the form and manner re- 

 counted in my last chapter. My guide very quietly 

 responded (as if instinctively divining the subject 

 of my meditations) to my involuntary observation 

 with the simple question : " Did you land him ? " 

 And then I became as voluble as I had before been 

 silent in recounting to him the incident already 

 related to my readers. And just this is the thread 

 upon which I have strung this bit of " abstraction." 



