DIBS PISCATORIiE. 577 



occupied the back leaves of your fly-book for long years are 

 profitable things to invest in this way, for three boys out of 

 four you meet with, will ask you to sell them "a pair of fly- 

 hooks," which of course results in your giving them a brace 

 or so that are a little the worse for wear, or too gay for your 

 own use. 



If the fly-fisher, though, would have "society where none 

 intrudes," or society that wonH intrude, let him take a lad of 

 ten or twelve along to carry his dinner, and to relieve him 

 after the roast, by transferring part of the contents of his 

 creel to the empty dinner-basket. The garrulity and queer 

 questions of a country boy of this age are amusing, when you 

 are disposed to talk. Any person who has sojourned at my 

 friend Jim Henry's, and had his good-natured untiring boy 

 Luther for his gilly, will acknowledge the advantage of such 

 a "tail " even if it has not as many joints as a Highland laird's. 



If there is an objection to a Trout-roast, it is that a man 

 eats too much, and feels lazy after dinner. But what of that ? 

 it is a luxurious indolence, without care for the morrow — 

 Care ! why, he left that at home when he bought his railroad 

 ticket, and shook off the dust of the city from his hob- 

 nailed boots. 



What pretty bright Trout there are in this bold rocky 

 creek ! it would be called a river in England, and so it is. 

 We Americans have an ugly way of calling every stream not 

 a hundred yards wide, a creek. It is all well enough when 

 the name is applied to some still sedgy water, which loses 

 half of its depth, and three-fourths of its width, at low tide, 

 and is bank-full on the flood. But speckled fellows like 

 these don't live there. De Kay must have received some 

 inspiration at a Trout-roast, when he gave them the specific 

 name of "Fontinalis," and they are truly the Salmon of the 

 fountain; for a stream like this and its little tributaries, 

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