FLY-FISHING ALONE. 



WITH many persons fishing is a mere recreation, a pleasant 

 way of killing time. To the true angler, however, the 

 sensation it produces is a deep unspoken joy, born of a long- 

 ing for that which is quiet and peaceful, and fostered by an 

 inbred love of communing with nature, as he walks through 

 grassy meads, or listens to the music of the mountain torrent. 

 This is why he loves occasionally whatever may be his 

 social propensity in-doors to shun the habitations and 

 usual haunts of men, and wander alone by the stream, casting 

 his flies over its bright waters : or in his lone canoe to skim 

 the unruffled surface of the inland lake, where no sound 

 comes to his ear but the wild, flute-like cry of the loon, and 

 where no human form is seen but his own, mirrored in the 

 glassy water. 



No wonder, then, that the fly-fisher loves at times to take a 

 day, all by himself; for his very loneliness begets a comfort- 

 able feeling of independence and leisure, and a quiet assur- 

 ance of resources within himself to meet all diificulties that 

 may arise. 



As he takes a near cut to the stream, along some blind 

 road or cattle-path, he hears the wood-robin with its "to-whey 1 

 calling to its mate in the thicket, where itself was fledged the 

 summer before. When he stops to rest at the " wind clear- 

 ing," he recalls the traditionary stories told by the old lum- 

 bermen, of the Indians who occupied the country when their 

 grandfathers moved out to the "back settlements," and, as he 



(567) 



