IN THE CATSKILLS 



be had, gained perhaps by doing some piece of work 

 about the farm or garden in half the allotted time, 

 the little creek that headed in the paternal domain 

 was handy; when half a day was at one's disposal, 

 there were the hemlocks, less than a mile distant, 

 with their loitering, meditative, log-impeded stream 

 and their dusky, fragrant depths. Alert and wide- 

 eyed, one picked his way along, startled now and 

 then by the sudden bursting-up of the partridge, or 

 by the whistling wings of the "dropping snipe," 

 pressing through the brush and the briers, or find- 

 ing an easy passage over the trunk of a prostrate tree, 

 carefully letting his hook down through some tangle 

 into a still pool, or standing in some high, sombre 

 avenue and watching his line float in and out amid 

 the moss-covered boulders. In my first essayings I 

 used to go to the edge of these hemlocks, seldom 

 dipping into them beyond the first pool where the 

 stream swept under the roots of two large trees. 

 From this point I could look back into the sunlit 

 fields where the cattle were grazing; beyond, all was 

 gloom and mystery; the trout were black, and to 

 my young imagination the silence and the shadows 

 were blacker. But gradually I yielded to the fasci- 

 nation and penetrated the woods farther and farther 

 on each expedition, till the heart of the mystery was 

 fairly plucked out. During the second or third year 

 of my piscatorial experience I went through them, 

 and through the pasture and meadow beyond, and 

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