2l4 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. io, 1904. 
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Are Anglers Born or Made ? 
We who have to do with anglers are accustomed to 
hear that fishermen, like other great men, are born, not 
made. That a man takes to angling as an eel to wrig- 
gling — because he has to. That he fishes because he can- 
not help it. That he is made of clay just a little different 
from other and less favored mortals. That his love for 
the wildness of nature is of a different and more irre- 
sistible kind than that of his neighbors and friends. Every 
book, essay, and poem on angling or anglers, reflects this 
view. Anyone who is familiar with such literature, . or 
who comes frequently in contact with fishermen, will 
testify that I have not misstated the case. 
Having heard this asserted so often and so positively, 
and haying seen it lived up to so faithfully, I had come to 
believe it implicitly, although I have sometimes wondered 
if those who had to fish, who could not help it, continued 
their enforced sport if transported to the desert of 
Sahara, or if landed by a mischance in the penitentiary. 
Until lately, however, no real doubt ever entered my 
mind. Now I am become a skeptic, and the tale that fol- 
lows is largely responsible for the change. 
One spring there came, I am told, a new parson to a 
parish in a quiet Ohio town. I do not know that there 
was anything especially remarkable about the new parson, 
except his pleasant, cordial manner, and the air of robust 
health and vigor that surrounded him. Neither do I 
know that there was anything particularly worthy of note 
in the quiet town to which he came. It was just an or- 
dinary town — there are thousands such — a prosperous 
business community ; the men attending to their work, to 
their families, - to politics, to their churches. Ordinary, 
every-day men and women they were, apparently well 
contented with the quiet lives they led. It is related that 
all, both men and women, were pleased with the new 
parson; his cordial manner and undoubted interest in 
them taking them by storm. The fact that the first ques- 
tion he asked was about the fishing in the vicinity, and 
the second concerning the anglers in the town, failed to 
arouse either wonder or suspicion. 
Perhaps you will have surmised that the parson was an 
angler. He was ; an enthusiastic, inveterate, heart-and- 
soul angler — one of the kind who fish because they have 
to, because they cannot help it. He had grown up in a 
mountain town in Pennsylvania, where the principal in- 
terest of life appeared to be fishing; where the streams 
were filled with trout, the river with bass, various runs 
and creeks and dams and canals with pike and catfish and 
eels, and where there was something to catch all the year 
round; where people who knew asserted that there were 
more men who loved fishing, and more wom«n who hated 
it than in any other town in the State, and where the 
honor paid to a good angler was greater than that ac- 
corded to the President. The parson's principal and far 
most precious impedimenta, if the truth had been known, 
consisted of the various angling implements his means 
had permitted him to buy, or his friends had been per- 
suaded to give him. Before accepting his new charge, he 
had made diligent inquiry and had learned that it was 
situated in the midst of a good fishing country, and that 
its streams were accessible, and likely to be all that the 
heart of an angler could desire. No one ever said that 
this and not the opportunities and emoluments offered 
was the real reason he accepted the charge, but it cer- 
tainly did not move him to refuse it. 
As I said, one of the first things he did on arriving at 
his new home was to make inquiries on this vital point, 
but nobody knew anything about it. As to fishermen- 
there was one old fellow who lived somewhere around 
who did fish sometimes somewheres, and this fact alone 
seemed sufficient to condemn him in the eyes of the per- 
son who furnished the information. The parson was not 
discouraged, but pursued his inquiries, ran down the man 
who fished, and learned that he had not been misinformed 
as to the character of the streams, and that he had evi- 
dently fallen on his feet. 
Now what happened ? The parson proceeded to indulge 
in his favorite sport in the open and flagrant way to 
which he had always been accustomed. He haunted the 
streams during his leisure hours and became accustomed 
to their peculiarities. He carried home large strings of 
bass, right through' the public streets, stopping at store 
doors and the porches by the way to show them with the 
usual pride of the successful angler. He made presents 
of fish to various parishioners, and sent them as dainties 
to the sick and convalescent of his flock. He wore the 
usual disreputable garb of the angler in the usual shame- 
less way. He openly arranged his work so as to get off 
when conditions were right. He told endless stories of 
his good and bad days tO' audiences that gradually became 
appreciative. He showed his store of tackle, and ex- 
plained its merits and demerits to whomsoever he could 
persuade to examine it ; lent his sporting literature, books 
and magazines, to whoever cared to borrow them ; in- 
structed the small boys of the village how to obtain bait. 
In short, behaved toward the fishing in the frank and 
open manner to which he had been accustomed in the 
Pennsylvania town aforementioned, where everybody 
masculine fished, more or less. 
It is useless to deny that at first the inhabitants of the 
staid Ohio village, particularly those connected with the 
parson and his church, were scandalized and alarmed, 
looking at each Other and wondering what sort of ma,rj 
this was. But the parson proved as ardent in his work 
as in his play, and little room was found for criticism in 
that quarter, and soon signs of the spread of the con- 
tagion became apparent. First a few of the younger and 
rasher of the men of the village took to attiring them- 
selves in their oldest clothes and — rather shamefacedly, 
to be sure — following the parson through the streets with 
fishing rods over their shoulders and bait buckets in their 
hands. That they also began to follow him into his 
church and to aid him in various ways — just as shame- 
facedly, be it added — perhaps made the observers more 
lenient in their judgment. Soon these young men, too, 
began to bring back strings of bass, stopping to show 
them and to relate the manner of their capture. And the 
shamefacedness disappeared. The town gradually fell 
into line. The demands for tackle — rods, lines, bait 
buckets, hooks, flies, reels, etc. — so increased that various 
stores added this department to their stock. Old and 
worn out clothes took on a fictitious value; book stores 
added sporting literature to their lines; in fact, before 
many years the village became thoroughly infected. 
Wives and mothers became experts at making minnow 
nets for catching bait, and the youngsters at using them. 
The men came to- know a good fishing yarn when they 
heard it. The newspapers gave advice freely on the sub- 
ject. One favorite and never old subject of conversation 
became the prospects as they related to the fishing. The 
book stores displayed the latest publications ; new sporting 
goods attracted immediate attention, and wives no longer 
worried over what they should give their husbands. In- 
deed, in time, the most flattering gift a man could send 
to> his Congressman or to his sweetheart came to be an 
unusually fine mess of fish. 
To show how .thoroughly inoculated the community 
became, it hardly needs the story that was told and cur- 
rently believed during the later years of the parson's life ; 
told, be it added, with only a smile and a shake of the 
head by even the most conscientious! of the parson's flock. 
It was said that when he contemplated holding service 
at certain outlying schoolhouses, where he had become 
one of the bright spots in the people's lives, the privilege 
of accompanying him was greatly appreciated. These 
schoolhouses were almost all built on the banks of some 
of the streams. The parson usually went on a week day 
and held the service in the afternoon. The man who* went 
along was not expected, so it was said, to attend service, 
but to spend the time in getting the tackle ready, and the 
bait caught, and he was always required to keep in plain 
view from the windows of the little building, so that the 
parson could keep an eye on him and see that he played 
fair. If the man was unable to resist the temptation and 
started to fish, the parson's final "Amen!" was said to 
follow so quickly that the congregation would have been 
startled had they not, too, had an eye out of the window, 
and known the state of affairs. 
Thus was the town transformed from a quiet, slow- 
going village into a community of men who, according 
to the parson, actually enjoyed life. This character it is 
said to preserve unto this day. 
A second generation has appeared since then. These 
latter, I am told, regard themselves as true anglers — as 
men who fish because they have to, because they can't 
help it. They exhibit all the characteristics of the true 
angler. But, knowing what I do, I' cannot help asking 
myself, are these claims reasonable? Does this case up- 
set the delightful fallacy of the angler as to his heaven- 
sent prerogative, or does it not? In short, are anglers 
born or made? 1 Justina Johnson. 
Boyhood Days in Illinois. 
My boyhood home was a pioneer farm in northwestern 
Illinois, my parents having settled there in 1847. The 
nearest town was on the. Mississippi River, at least fifteen 
miles away. Our house was on the rolling prairie, but 
a quarter of a mile south you entered the hazel bushes ; 
then came the burr oaks and black jacks, then the mighty 
white oaks, black oaks, hickories, hackberries, walnuts, 
butternuts, buckeyes, etc., stretching away for five miles 
south, and extending from east to west for fifty miles at 
least. That timber was a wilderness that remained un- 
settled until after the Civil War. The various streams 
ran from east to west with that line of timber and 
emptied into the Mississippi River. Only a half mile 
south of our house was the first stream, called Pike Run. 
Whether this stream was named after the great pathfinder, 
Zebulom M. Pike, or on account of the kind of fish caught 
there in the early days, I do not know; but that pike 
were very plentiful in it during the fifties I know to be 
a fact. There are no fish in Pike Run now, and the run 
only runs after a heavy rain. 
My first fishing excursion took place in June, 1857, 
when I was not quite eight years old. After my father 
and my Uncle Tom, who lived with us, had plowed corn 
all day, they decided to go to Pike Run that night and 
fish by moonlight. Some one had told my uncle that the 
fish bit well at night, and he was anxious to try it. I 
was told that I could not go, but must go to bed, but as 
both the men were going, and there was no other person 
about the place who cared to sit on me, I arrived at the 
run almost as soon as the men. Father had crossed the 
run and taken up a good position on the other side, and 
Uncle Tom had climbed out on a leaning tree that reached 
clear across the stream,- and they soon had their lines in 
the water and were quietly waiting for bites. There were 
a great many strange sounds down on the ground where 
I was — owls hooting and screeching, frogs croaking, and 
once in a while a stick would break, as though some large 
animal had stepped upon it, and I soon felt very spooky ; 
so I climbed up and out on the leaning tree close to Uncle 
Tom, right over the middle of the creek, and laid myself 
out at full length along the body of the tree, with my 
arms around it, and in this position watched and waited 
for developments. I had no intention of going to sleep, 
but I waked up just as I landed on my back and sank 
in four feet of very chilly water. Father fished me out, 
and held a very animated conversation with me for a few 
minutes, and then we all went home. As my clothes 
consisted of not over a yard and a half of check hickory, 
I was about dry when I got home, and as Uncle Tom said 
that nothing but suckers would bite at night, and that we 
would go again soon in daylight, I went to bed happy. 
A few days later the prairie breakers came to do some 
breaking for my father, and they had eight yoke of oxen 
and a monstrous big plow that had a pole along the top 
of it that was used to regulate the depth of the furrow, 
and about the first thing they asked about, was where 
they could get some good whip-stocks. I was on deck in 
a minute, and went with one of them to the run, where we 
cut a good supply of young hickories from twelve to fif- 
teen feet long, as straight as arrows, very slim and wil- 
lowy, and to one of these they fastened the whip-lash, 
which was made out of platted or twisted leather, and 
was ten to twelve feet long, and to this was attached a 
buckskin cracker on the end, about a foot and a half long ; 
and I noticed that when the driver would knock a fly off a 
steer's rump, that he would bow his back away up and 
twist himself almost out of the yoke, and seem to want to 
pull the whole load himself for a few minutes; and if 
either of these men crossed the plains in the early days, 
I can tell how the Indians learned to swear. When the 
prospectors crossed the plains in i860, bound for Pike's 
Peak, if they met an Indian and asked him how many 
teams he had met on the road, he would hold up two> or 
three fingers and say, 'Whoa haw gaw dams," meaning so 
many teams of oxen. 
A few days after the prairie breakers came, they took a 
notion that there were young wolves in one of the dens 
near our house, and concluded to dig them out, so when 
one morning Uncle Tom reported to them that the old 
mother wolf had gone out for a walk they went at it, and 
after digging for a while one of them slid down into the 
den and handed out the young wolves, eight or nine of 
them, not much larger than kittens, and Uncle Tom 
knocked them on the head. While the men were digging 
for the wolves, my father had walked down to the den, 
with the old Kentucky rifle on his arm, to watch the fun, 
as I supposed; and while I was intently examining the 
young wolves, the rifle cracked, and the old mother wolf, 
who had just looked over the brow of the hill, was kick- 
ing her last, with a little round hole in the center of her 
forehead. 
One bright October morning in the fall of that same 
year, we were all getting ready to ride eight miles in the 
big lumber wagon to visit one of my grandfathers, when 
we noticed a drove of deer on the next ridge, not a quar- 
ter of a mile from our house. Some were lying down 
and the others standing around in lazy contentment, when 
suddenly there was a scramble and a race. Two or three 
big prairie wolves had come down the hollow and started 
after the deer, and it was a pretty sight to see those deer 
jump the high board fence on the east side of our place, 
one at a time, and make for the woods south of us. The 
fence had only three boards, but they were the three upper 
ones, the two lower boards of all fences having been 
left off until after the repeal of the hog law some years 
later. The wolves went under the fence, and soon all dis- 
appeared in the woods. The sight of deer and wolves 
was quite common in those days, but that was the only 
time I ever saw the one chasing the other. 
One cold, blustering morning a little later, one of the 
children had been looking out of the window and reported 
that there was a strange dog looking through the fence. 
Father told us to keep still, and he took down the old rifle 
from its hooks on the wall, then opened the door very 
quietly three or four inches, poked the gun out, and almost 
instantly there was a sharp report and the strange dog — 
that turned out to be a big timber wolf — rolled over dead. 
I made an inspection and found that same small round 
hole in the center of the forehead, and I do not remember 
to have ever examined an animal — hog, beef, or anything 
else, that my father shot that did not have that little round 
hole just in the center of its forehead. That old rifle 
shot a very small ball, not less than sixty to the pound, 
and the stock ran the whole length of the barrel, and it 
was nearly six feet long. It afterwards became a close 
companion of mine in many an outing in the woods and 
fields. 
The next summer I began to make excursions into the 
woods, and as the summer advanced they became more 
frequent and extended. One day about the first of July 
I made a trip of more than three miles from home, and 
found a place in the timber where nearly all the trees had 
been cut, the wood hauled away, and nothing left but the 
stumps. This was a "hooking quarter." I expect that 
many young men of to-day never heard of a hooking 
quarter. There were many of them in western Illinois in 
