ALONG A TROUT-STREAM 



" Where have you been, my devotee ? 

 Why have you roamed so far from me? 

 'thrice welcome hack to my fair shore! 

 No-d! learn to love me more and more." 



He sees the flash of the body of a brook trout as he 

 leaps from the brook, in pursuit of a butterfly, wander- 

 ing too near the water's surface for safety. The line 

 and flies have drifted from the log. Flash ! a trout 

 strikes one of the lures, pulls the rod into the stream, 

 and the owner scrambles after it. Now he is casting 

 again, and filling the creel. Nearly every effort brings 

 some response. In pools, behind rocks, on the ripples, 

 here by the bank, there beneath those logs, yonder in 

 the foam of the rapids, and in places where least sus- 

 pected, glittering in beauty, crimson-spotted, always 

 ready for a bait, lurk and play the wild brook trout. 

 The wild trout is the ideal fish, the fish of the 

 poets and the sportsman, who often feels that the 

 breeding-pond is the half-way house to a fish-stall in a 

 market. 



And so he wanders down the brook, happy, filling 

 his hours with best recreation. Steeper, higher, wilder, 

 in lordly, many-colored scenes, grow the banks of the 

 Glen. Great trout lie in the waters which eddy, 

 rush, and glance in silvery wilfulness over an intaglio 

 of white and golden gravel that beautifies the swift 

 current. 



Thus, all too quickly, passes the angler's day. The 



17S 



