ALONG A TROUT-STREAM 



fishing. He could talk for hours of rods, lines, leaders, 

 and reels — of camping, guides, tents, pack-horses, ca- 

 noes ; of the various flies to be used according to sea- 

 son, location, lights, hours of day or night, on a dozen 

 widely separated streams. He has fished on the Peri- 

 bonca in Quebec, the best salmon-streams in New- 

 foundland, the far-famed Nepigon, and the fierce 

 waters of a dozen rivers in British Columbia that are 

 guarded by black mountains whose bases were green 

 with foliage ; while their peaks, sometimes two miles 

 high, carried snow-banners in every high wind. He 

 knows Pennsylvania's best trout-streams; and the wa- 

 ters of the Muskoka Region ; besides the Au Sable, 

 Shuswap, Two Medicine and St. Mary's Lakes in 

 Montana, and Square and the Sourdnahonk Lakes in 

 Maine. Trout from the Margaree in Cape Breton, 

 from the Tabusintac and Bartibog Rivers in New 

 Brunswick, and the Morell Stream on Prince Edward 

 Island, have been brought to his creel by hundreds. 

 The best cruising for edible salt-water fishes — that 

 around Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds — is familiar to 

 him. But nowhere else exist such wildness, remote- 

 ness, wealth of sylvan enchantment, such flavor to 

 trout, such health and life in air and water, such music 

 in a stream, as along the peerless little Slagle River ! 



He is realizing this, and is happy to the point of 

 fear. He could easily fill his creel with trout ; yet he 

 does not cast the flies. For he is in a hypnotized 

 state. He will not even light his morning cigar; its 



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