486 
FOREST AND STREAM 
tJUNE 20, 1903. 
tc the concourse of sweet sounds. It is the divinity in 
hannonies ircnibling along the harp-wires, and through 
all the air. 
It ceases; the performers stand motionless, while the 
master soloist now sweeps the harp-strings ; and they give 
back their loving answer to violin, drum, oboe, cymbal, 
cornet, flute and clarionet— all having waked in them the 
faint, trembling, echoing vibrations of the harp-song. 
We say "Fine music is very sweet and beautiful." VVhy' 
Because the human soul is not only endowed with a 
sense of beauty of sound, but is itself a harp tuned more 
or less perfectly — sometimes dulled and apathetic, some- 
times exquisitely sensitive. The music borne through the 
mere instruments beats upon and wakes to life countless 
mystic strings in the soul-harp, blessing with their har- 
monies, refining, ennobling, purifying in proportion as 
man knows and is swayed ! I repeat,_ many and many of 
these soul-notes can never be described in words; yet 
they sing, regnant, swaying, with sure control, in our in- 
most souls, when finest music not only floods our ears, 
but our hearts. 
Quite as powerful, mystic and exquisite, is the music of 
the eye, or as Wordsworth calls it, the eye-harvest. Here 
on the Delaware we are with a sight orchestra, forever 
playing lovely symphonies. Infinite change and gradation 
in mysteries of distance, fantasy and grace of varied and 
divided motion, enchantments of hues that change, blend 
and part again ! Exquisite lines of curvature, and tender- 
est finish on rocks and hills! Clouds, crests, pinnacles, 
leafage and its shadows, boughs, "weeds," flowers ; glories 
of sunlight, dreamy landscapes asleep under afternoon 
sunshine, fairy glints from stars where water flows or 
falls in showers of tossed pearls— these are some of the 
"moods" and "eflFects," interwoven, divine, which are 
forever summoned in sight-harmonies by the baton of 
creative intelligence— the Master of the Looms. 
Vital thoughts, but not new ones! Others have often 
stated them far better than the writer, and freed from 
turgid dross and all offensive grandiloquence. 
.\nd far more powerfully and in richer measure than 
the sound-harmonies wkedjhy human players upon in- 
struments that, at best, are not perfect, the perpetual sight- 
harmonies play upon tlie Jioul-harp, especially when its 
owner stands where tiiey" may beat upon it in rich 
abundance. More, nature forever adds harmonies of ^ 
sound in woods, waters, skies, birds, winds! 
This brings us to the curious fact that none know the 
absolute verity of all this better than those who are dis- 
posed to call such thoughts mere rhapsody, and that such 
critics are usually the work-weary, office-burned, practical 
men who are forced to starve the soul in business slavery 
and chase of the elusive dollar, and yet who flee during 
vacations to freedom, outdoor life, leisure, recreation, 
and the novelty of wild and sylvan environment. But I 
have yet to see one of these critics who will scoff at such 
thoughts as he actually listens to and sees Nature's or- 
chestras', and as their harmonies wake the soul-harp to 
sympathetic response. 
But there is a sense in which the soul-harp is never 
still. After all, the strings must often vibrate to chords 
waked by itself. Hate, love, jealousy, revenge, pique, 
melancholy, triumph, admiration, ecstasy, and a hundred, 
other moods, and still a thousand nameless others that 
are often scarcely recognized or traceable by one's self, 
forever sway us; although often lying dormant until 
roused ; and there is not one of these moods and feelings, 
however mystic or inexpressible in words, that nature 
cannot show in synonym and duplicate through her in- 
finite manifestations. 
Tempests rage, rills sing with baby murmurings, light- 
ning l3lasts, the hawk swoops upon the thrush in full 
song, and cruel claws end the singer's life even while blue 
sky smiles and sunshine blesses the thorn-blossoms, below 
which the fledglings of that thrush are doomed to wail, 
hunger, starve and die. Fidelity in the forget-me-not 
blooms, love in violets looking up to their sister blue of 
the sky; joyousness of the robin's chirp, sure self-poise of 
the soaring eagle, swift cruelty as he drops upon and 
Ijears away the rabbit to feed his brats in some cairn 
along a cliff ! And the sadness of gray landscape, heart- 
broken sorrow as in the night-notes of the mourning dove: 
strength and loveliness of wide summer fields and forest, 
astir under brisk winds, dolce far niente of sunny after- 
noons brooding over all, mystic ecstasy of dreaming as of 
moonlit waves and sleeping forests; hints from the un- 
knowable, as of starbeams softly falling into the eye after 
a pure, steadfast, inconceivably swift journey of thousands 
of years ; and reaching out for help in difficulty and in- 
tense desire that has transfofmed itself into possibility, 
as of elm and hemlock roots winding far over and be- 
tween crevices of rocks to reach earth and water ! 
In all ?his nature has a soul ! She gathers the sunbeams 
out of the east and brings sweetness of light. She glories 
in majestic tyranny of waves, pathos of still, white moun- 
tain peaks, says her vesper prayers in her own sum- 
moned evening twilight, rejoices in the rosy tints of hol- 
lows beneath the curved crests of her snow-drifts, up- 
holds, sways, and bends with .grace in wind-tried boughs, 
and symbolizes destruction in the conflagration and dying 
glories of sunset clouds ! 
Again I insist, all this is sternest fact. No wonder that 
the Psalmist declared : "Day unto day uttereth speech, 
and night unto night showeth knowledge." 
But there is a further and curious truth. Man is the 
glass of nature, and, by inversion, nature is the glass of 
man. It is not always true, as Bryant states, that nature 
steals into man's "darker musings with a mild and heal- 
ing sympathy that takes away their sharpness ere he is 
aware." Note the sadness in the "Ode to the Nightingale" 
by Keats, and "In a Drear-nighted December" by Shelley. 
Men often find their depression deepened by contemplation 
of nature. "Over her face their own shadows fall — grass, 
thicket, white hawthorn, fading violets and frozen tree, 
ice-bound stream, sea-wave and weed and sand are inter- 
penetrated with . the lassitude, the melancholy and the 
fevered exhaustion of life, where hope, passion, and the 
desire of the heart, soul and mind are sinking on the ebb- 
tide of the ocean whose further shores are the land of 
the unknown." 
Sight to behold and know something of all this will 
come to the angler as the years pass, and more quickly 
if he also camps. His tent is his tabernacle. The paddle 
is his sail, the dimples waked by its gashes are smiles to 
\im ffon? the watetj and its drops are dew to his X^eaxt 
The lancewood or bamboo rod is not merely an instru- 
ment to be used in landing a black bass, salmon or trout. 
Used rightly, it is, far more, the wand by which he un- 
folds nature's scrolls, and reveals "the boundless store of 
charms" which she yields to her votary. Tent, paddle, 
canoe, rods and reels, the far-reaching views and hills, the 
song of flowing water and novel sequence and current of 
events, compel and bless change of thought, with their 
endless new topics for contemplation and perception. 
I am aware that, to some, this will seem like an attempt 
to be abstruse and mere weak analysis — lacking interest, 
and out of place in these columns. But the subject itself 
is of vital import to every sportsman. Alas, my feeble, 
perhaps self-conscious pen, may have chosen words for it 
that seem to strut and pose. May far better writers deal 
with this subject. My only excuse for it here is love, and 
sincere wish to make others love. 
We get practical proof of the truth of much of what 
has preceded in the simple happenings of the morning. 
Last night my chum yielded to temptation and "went bull 
poutin' " with some young men who live at the Gap. He 
was on the river until after midnight, and then helped to 
SLEEPING LATE. 
fry the bullheads in the kitchen of the station hotel. Pie, 
cheese, doughnuts, hot biscuits, coffee ; then a cigar, and 
finally a pipe in his room here at the Glenwood. This 
morning he is "a wreck" — bilious, moody, silent, "wuss'n' 
snappin' turtle!" as his repulsed boy friend complains. 
"How d'ye feel?" I ask him, as he sits on the front 
porch. 
"Like that," he replies, waving his hand toward the 
rain-sodden meadows and dripping trees and the dun, 
weeping clouds, a sadness of dreary landscape full of 
moaning gusts and depression. 
"Jes' like that!" he repeats. "It's a sombre morning 
inside o' me, too. An' don't you come round lecturin' me. 
Let me alone !" 
Moods of a bilious soul and a dark wet day in unison. 
Comedy ! 
But at the other end of the porch sits a man on whom 
a dread disease has settled. A hunted, hopeless, resigned 
DELAWARE RIVER BASS. 
look in his hollow eyes ! It is a sombre day indeed with 
him, and the landscape typifies his darkness. Tragedy! 
An hour later ! Bursts of sunshine, great patches of 
blue sky, glorious colors on and through driving clouds; 
drying foliage, renewing bird songs! ,A mile away the 
long line of maples that edge a forest change from green 
to gray, and affect the whole aspect of the landscape as 
the wind lifts the leaves and shows their silvery under 
sides. Nature is "cheering up!" So are my two friends. 
After dinner! Silver palaces upreared in the blue abyss 
along the horizons ! Dry leafage, almost clear sky ; and 
quails and robins are calling. My chum sits in the same 
porch chair, admiring the wide view. 
"How d' ye feel now?" I ask again. 
"Like that landscape ! Git on yer old rig and come on, 
Bass'll bite good after the rain !" Comedy again ! 
At the other end of the porch the slow pathos of a life 
ebbing away continues; but the stricken man's face has 
brightened. Hope has returned to those eyes, shining 
through resigned acceptance. His voice is cheery. "How 
beautiful the world is! The doctor just tells me I am 
better. If I do go, maybe I shall live in palaces something 
like those silver ones in the sky beyond that mountain." 
And so the days and nights pass along the Delaware, 
full of incident. A moonlight row by our whole party of 
five, the college boy and his best girl especially hypnotized, 
for they are in "that new world which is the old." The 
inevitable river angling, with its lunch at noonday at the 
Benekill spring, and a long hour with our cigars as we 
lie on the ^ras? wit^ our coats for piljows, and the pale 
moon of full daylight swings westward! My comrade 
mourns over his nearing departure, but begins to long for 
the strenuous city life. 
"D'ye see that mountain over there?" 
"po I? It fills all that part of the sky." 
"Well, it's not a real mountain, but a mighty big hill. 
I've got courage like that to draw on now! Let's steal 
some blankets, pack 'em on a horse,, an' go up there an' 
sleep on the ground." 
"Done !" 
And so in the next number I shall try to tell of hills; 
but the constant and crushing sense of impotence to really 
describe is very disheartening. Only sincere desire to 
induce others to go a-fishing and a-camping and see the 
actual nature-beauties, prompts a continuance of this 
series. 
No words, especially my poor words, can do more than 
hint at their loveliness and grace. The eye should look 
for itself, not merely through foggy, pitifully inadequate 
word-pictures by another. How poor a substitute for the 
actual scenes is this spreading of black ink on white 
paper ! For "the smell of flowering clover, the sounds of 
winds in poplar boughs, the touch of sun-warm turf as 
we lie on it, bring us nearer far to Earth than all the 
mental images of the blurred pink and gray-green sum- 
mer meadows behind high-hedged lanes — nearer than any 
verse which tells of the rustle and stir of leaves, or of the 
sheep-cropped downs." 
Go yourself! ^ See the moss-tapestried nooks, hear the 
voices of the river, and witness at first hand and not by 
proxy "the infinite gradations of daylight and twilight 
and darkness, the countless variations of cloud-forms and 
cloud-colors, the tinted outlines of hills and mountains, 
the lights and shadows that wing their way over plains 
and fields, the phantom and fleeting panoramas of water 
reflections." For these cannot be really translated (not 
even impressions of them) by the deftest painters with 
pigments or with words. Before the actual scenes, out 
with the wide world of nature, you will vividly see not 
only her loveliness, but, far more vital, you will behold 
the loveliness in these visible thoughts of the Supreme 
Artist who planned and brought them into being. You 
will learn to know the infinite divinity in nature, as well 
as her infinite beauties of hue, motion, sound, form, life 
and mystery, and love her more and more. 
It would seem that representative nature-lovers and 
sportsmen would not be ashamed of that love, nor of 
slating it as the principal well-spring of their enjoyments 
while angling or camping. Yet at a recent meeting and 
banquet of many hundreds of American nature-lovers 
and sportsmen, presided over and managed by men of 
wide reputation, the most successful speaker was a min- 
ister and doctor of divinity. It was a great occasion, and 
a great opportunity; but it was not utilized by any 
speaker. How Burroughs (our only John!), Thoreaii. 
Emerson, Hanierton, Ruskin, Jordan or Lowell would 
have pictured in earnest, loving words, the nobility and 
refining influences of the camp, and the delights of the 
pastime loved by Izaak Walton ! But this speaker's most 
successful passage was a story about a fisherman who said 
that whisky was a sure specific for snake-bite, but that it 
was necessary for an angler to have the whisky in him 
"before he was bit !" L. F. Brown. 
Fifteen Hours with a Salmon. 
GuERETTE, Me., June y.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
Up here, where S-pound trout come in every day, where 
a lake trout has to touch 10 pounds to be a "big un," 
there was something doing yesterday. Mr. Edward 
Spaeth hooked a landlocked salmon, and from that 
time until the fish was in the net, was just fifteen hours 
and five minutes. Out all night till broad daylight; got 
home with the fish in the morning. At 3:15 P. M. he 
struck, and all night that 7J^-pound devil jumped, ran, 
sulked, got under the boat, jumped clean and clear 
over the paddles, and jumped out of water twenty-six 
times. The guide said he traveled twenty-five miles 
during the night. The tackle was an A-i 6i/2-ounce 
split bamboo and all else in proportion. 
Another fish in the same lake jumped squarely into 
the boat, caught the hook on a coat and fell off in the 
boat. The record for weight for this lake is: rod and 
line, i9!/4 pounds; net (by fish commission), 23^. A 
7-pound square tail was taken the same day by another 
of the same party, Judge Coult, Newark, N. J. These 
are facts; I will swear to them. Pink Edge. 
Hartford, Conn., June 9. — Editor Forest and Stream : 
Have just returned from Cumming's camps, Cross 
Lake, Maine. On Sunday Dr. French sent you an 
account of how Edward Spaeth, of Newark, held on to 
a landlocked salmon for over fifteen hours before land- 
ing him. Dr. French wrote out the account Sunday 
night, and then read it to our party. I told him that 
I thought his story was a little too short, and that a 
fuller account would be more interesting to fishermen 
and perhaps give credence to an almost improbable 
story. 
Mr. Spaeth, Mr. Coult and myself were trolling with 
live bait at the upper end of Salmon Lake (Mud Lake). 
I noticed that Mr. Spaeth had hooked something, and 
a moment later saw a salmon go up into the air. I 
told my guide that it looked like a big one, fully 15 or 
20 pounds. I thch looked at my watch and noted that 
the time was 3:15. I kept on trolling near Mr. Spaeth 
until about 6:30, when I went down to the lower end 
of the lake, and then returned to the camp. After sup- 
per Dr. French, Mr. Coult and myself played dummy 
whist until about midnight, expecting that Mr. Spaeth 
would come in almost any moment. At last we became 
alarmed, and about one sent two guides up to the lake. 
They got back about half past two, reported that Mr. 
Spaeth was still holding his fish and that it had leaped 
three times while they were there. 
I left the camp the following morning shortly before 
six, and a half hour later met Mr. Spaeth and his 
guide coming into the thoroughfare between Salmon 
and Cross lakes. I asked him when he had taken in 
the fish, and he said only a mew minutes before. He 
opened his box and showed me the salmon. It was an 
unusually long and. clipper-built fish, fully as long as 
an prdinary 15-pound salmon. The hook was still in 
' - - - ' .... It. a ' i < ' i ( 
