for the play of his powers. The hook is in the water. I have done my 
part and done it well. | will leave results to the fish; so that I (with 
that sagacity which marks my proceedings) take my book from my 
pocket—! have brought it for such occasion. If the fish are idle | must 
not emulate their example. I will read my friend Stephen Phillips. 
His pastorals shall be my chore. Now when | have a book which, to 
change my friend Milton's phrase, in harmony with my environment (1 
use that word not as knowing its meaning, but because | have seen it in 
print and once heard it mentioned by a speaker, now sick with the 
grippe—a book is the solace of those tardy hours in which a fisherman 
awaits the desultory humors of the fish); ‘Having a book’’ (quoted 
from my preceding remarks), | am well pleased and go on with my 
ALONG THE STREAM 
fishing. We shall get on well to-day. However inattentive to their 
duty the fish are, I will not be inattentive to mine. | will read a spell. 
My friend William Wadsworth was a fisher of my sort—he walked 
along the streams, loved them and dreamed of them , and | will in defer- 
ence to his good taste read him betimes. Now fishing seems a levity. 
I leave the fish to their own devices. The cork may bob or sink for 
all of me. I do not care. Virtue is its own reward. | have baited the 
hook and have placed it in the watery element (whatever that is). Can 
any ethical code demand more? To do more would be a work of 
supererogation, and | always hold that works of supererogation are void. 
{ will now rest until the sun gets in my eyes and the perspiration (peri- 
phrasis for sweat), starts from my face, whereupon with a fine courtesy 
worthy of Chesterfield | will move out of the sun’s way. If I am not a 
gentleman | am nothing, though I desire to make no boast. 
87 
