380 Book of the Black Bass. 



your fly into a branch of a tree overhead, or into a bush 

 behind jou, or miss your fish in striking, or lose him when 

 hooked, or crack off your tail-fly, or slip into a hole up to 

 your armpits — keep your temper; above all tilings don't 

 swear, "lest you be heard," as Izaak Walton says, "and 

 catch no fish." Eemember, yours is the gentle art, and a 

 fly-fisher should be a gentleman. 



A Eeiiiniscence. 



Toward the close of a day in the mild September, I wa^ 

 leisurely riding my tired mare across the ford of a narrow 

 rocky river that wound around the foot of a thickly-wooded 

 cliff, with here and there a pool in the shadow or a ripple dn 

 the Sim, while stretching away a mile or two across the fer- 

 tile bottom lands were fields of waving corn, fragrant 

 clover, blue-grass and broad-leaved tobacco. 



Up the stream a hundred yards away, stood, leaning over 

 the water, an old stone mill, whose lichen-covered walls and 

 moss-grown roof proclaimed its hoary age. Its old wheel 

 went rumbUng on its merry round, mingling its regular, 

 rhythmic plashing with the monotone of the tumbling, 

 rushing waters of the dam. 



Down the stream another hundred yards, an old-time, 

 covered bridge, decrepid and gray, spanned the little river, 

 casting cool and dark shadows beneath and below. 



The sun was sinking low beyond the fields, flinging bars 

 of jellow flame through the slender strips of fleecy clouds 

 that stretched across the western portal of the steel-blue 

 sky, lighting up the crimson of the newly-dyed sumach on 

 the cliff, flashing on the foaming waters of the falls, and 

 festooning with golden streamers and silver ribbons the 

 long, dank, green arms of the old water-wheel. 



Beneath the bridge a group of ruminating, sleek-coated 



