RECREATION 



Volume XII. 



TUNE, 1900. 

 G. 0. SHIELDS (COQUINA), Editor and Manager. 



Number 6. 



THE ANGLER'S PASSION. 



G. A. WARBURTON. 



The true angler can not think calm- 

 ly of his favorite sport. He feels an 

 uncontrollable passion for it. It is 

 this yearning, impelling force which 

 separates him from ordinary pleasure 

 seekers. They are fond of one or an- 

 other form of recreation, sometimes 

 taking it up with enthusiasm, but al- 

 ways mastering the thing they under- 

 take. They know self-restraint and 

 moderation. The angler is swept be- 

 yond the point of accountability and 

 becomes drunk with the nectar of his 

 pleasure. Unless a man has felt this 

 delightful slavery let him not think to 

 sit with the true Knights of the 

 Angle ! He would be as much out of 

 place as a costermonger in the chapel 

 of the Knights of the Bath at West- 

 minster. The royal touch alone can 

 give him place with dear old Isaac 

 Walton or Christopher North, and the 

 others of their ilk, of whom the world 

 was not worthy. A man may catch 

 sprats for the Bristol markets or sal- 

 mon from the Restigouche without in 

 either case deserving to be admitted to 

 the select circle. Christopher North 

 could write 2 essays on Wordsworth, 

 so contradictory as to prove a dual au- 

 thorship by all known principles of 

 criticism ; yet in everything he did or 

 said he showed that his master passion 

 was for catching trout in some moun- 

 tain burn or tarn. And how we have 

 all loved the quaint old Scotchman as 

 we have seen him at the edge of the 

 Dochart under the full power of the 

 angler's passion, reaching out for the 

 rising fish and at last wetting his 



breeks and his legs together in the 

 cold water, with never a thought of 

 the rheumatic possibilities of his con- 

 duct. I can not read that incident and 

 keep my lashes dry ! 



I wonder why the fishing passion is 

 so strong and why it strikes men at 

 such strange times. Your true angler 

 may be sitting by his library fire, with 

 the thermometer at zero, conning 

 Whittier's "Snow Bound" or War- 

 ner's "Backlog Studies," when sud- 

 denly the glowing of an ember or the 

 crackling of a bit of bark on the hick- 

 ory log reminds him of a little cabin 

 in a Maine forest, 



' 'A litle lowly Hermitage it was 

 Downe in a dale, hard by a forest's side, 

 Far from resort of people that did pas, 

 In traveillto and froe: ***** 

 Thereby a christall streame did gently play, 

 Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alwav," 



and the reader sees another volume, 

 the open book of Nature. The passi< m 

 has him. Slowly the noise of the chil- 

 dren's play in another room gives 

 place to the morning song of birds in 

 fir and balsam trees. Their odor (.-li- 

 ters his nostrils with soothing, heal- 

 ing influence. It is just daybreak and 

 down to the brookside lie walks in 

 solitary expectation. His rod i^ put 

 together with trembling fingers, for he 

 has just seen the lazy roll of a big 

 fish over at the vdv;v of the limpid 

 stream. A cast, a strike, a rush, a 

 victory for the art of man. Here <>n 

 the moss lies the vision of beauty. 

 plump and red-spotted. Tin- savage 

 nature cries out to the woodland 

 echoes, 



413 



