CHAPTER m 



IN THE TOADFISH'S SHOE 



WAS winding up my summer vaca- 

 tion with a little fishing party all by 

 myself, on a wharf whose piles stood 

 deep in the swirling waters from 

 Buzzards Bay. My heavy-leaded line 

 hummed taut in the swift current; 

 my legs hung limp above the 

 water ; my back rested comfort- 

 ably against a great timber that 

 was warm in the September sun. 

 Exciting ? Of course not. Fish- 

 ing is fishing — any kind of fishing is fishing to me. 

 But the kind I am most used to, and the kind I like 

 best, is from the edge of a wharf, where my feet 

 dangle over, where my "throw-out" line hums taut 

 over my finger, in a tide that runs swift and deep 

 and dark below me. 



For what may you not catch in such dark waters? 

 And when there are no " bites," you can sit and wait; 

 and I think that sitting and waiting with my back 

 -against a big warm timber is just as much fun now 

 as it used to be when I was a boy. 



But after all it is fish that you want when you 



