sorrow. Iam glad in my heart 1 came a-fishing. This is sport. But 
I am fishless—though that is a trifle not worth mentioning. 
There is another affable way of fishing I have often practiced and 
which | can commend. The modus operandi is as follows: Take your 
pole across your shoulder, let the line dangle so the hook is free to catch 
in the limbs of the trees and bushes as you walk along. The extracting 
of the hook will occupy your hands; for ‘Satan finds some work for 
idle hands to do:"’ and so | always think it wise to leave the line dangle 
and keep my hands employed. This has saved me from many a snare. 
Thus fortified for the fishing voyage, I go boldly near a stream. I walk 
along its banks. I watch the shimmer on the stream, and the shadows 
flung in the waters by the banks. A bunch of white flags sometimes 
(and what lily-white blosoms these water-loving flags wear!) and some- 
times a bank of sand touches the water, and is covered with bluebells 
which cast their lovely shadows in the stream. God is the first of the 
photographers. The smell of damp earth is in my nostrils, and the odor 
of the mints on which I walk. A bird flings across my face so that his 
wings almost touch me as he whirs by, and a redbird whistles as if he 
were joking with you. And the swallows circle with an almost musical 
motion, and the fair clouds lie listless as if absent on a day of quiet, and 
the hill climbs up from the stream's edge into a tangle of thicket and 
brier and moss, and the leap of some brave tree going toward the light 
with ragged branches, or a meadow smiles across the stream, and a 
woodland clouds with its green against the sky across the field. And I 
throw the rod down and forget it and wander smiling along as a pair of 
lovers, and gather flowers and find a red clover alone and gather it out 
of sheer courtesy, or surprise, or love (what matters which?). Ora 
bird's nest decoys me through the dark deeps of woods. And the 
stream laughs along. And you, looking at the sky, step unwittingly into 
its waters and like the souse of the water in your shoes. Fishermen of 
high grade are careless of wet feet; and besides, dew is in the thicket 
and on the grass, and drops from the trees, and how can you help hav- 
ing wet feet? And not to have them is to play at fishing. Let us be 
in earnest whatever we do. Let us not act at fishing; let us fish. 1 
always do. Wade across the stream often if you can without total im- 
mersion. That will bring you into contact with the native element of fish, 
and may give you the smell of their scales; but you can get wet, and 
that is desirable, for you feel fishy and the feeling is the main thing in 
fishing. I follow the winding of the stream. I go and caress the 
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