Sept. 13, 1913- 
FOREST AND STREAM 
333 
The Angling Horse 
I N a certain town in California, upon which 
hath been many blessings of beauty and 
felicity (being within reach of trout streams 
and the ocean), there is a club without a name, 
rhyme or even reason. It has no name except 
“the club,” and there are but four members. 
The club, after an existence of many years, has 
never been able to increase its membership be¬ 
yond the original four members, not that efforts 
were not made in this direction, but so extra¬ 
ordinary and so extremely altitudinous were the 
conditions that when a single member proposed 
a new one, the other three unanimously voted 
him down; so the club never grew, never 
achieved even a name—that was voted down, 
though I believe that Andrew Carnegie was voted 
to an honorary membership. This must have 
been done when three members were abroad, one 
on a ship coming west, two going east on an¬ 
other, and the third at the town in California 
mentioned. But that Mr. Carnegie had very hazy 
ideas as to whether he was a member or not and 
really doubted it is shown in a very clever letter 
the author received from him, in which he ex¬ 
pressed his opinion of the club in verse. Here 
it is: 
“Here’s to me and my wife, 
My son John and his wife; 
Us four and no more.” 
Despite all these drawbacks, the club and its 
operations were the source of much joy to the 
four members who, when the desire seized them 
—generally once a month or so — met at dinner; 
but what they did, where they went if at all, 
how, when and why is one of the mysteries, and 
doubtless cannot be answered by the members 
themselves or anyone else. The club was essen¬ 
tially a dry-fly fishers' club, its members rarely 
caught anything, but they bought old editions of 
Walton. They knew all about Juliana Berners 
and other worthies, and it is probably true that 
they discussed these matters learnedly, but 
Walton lived ages ago, so there was nothing 
particularly modern or up-to-date in the organi¬ 
zation, and I fancy this was the secret of its 
success. The club never did anything; it was 
open to any plan — it drifted. It was always in¬ 
tending to go abroad as a.club, or to go to this 
place or that, but these trips were all taken be¬ 
tween courses of the dinners and went no fur¬ 
ther. One of the members was a distinguished 
scientist (not of the Mrs. Eddy cult), who had 
an artistic temperament which found expression 
in various works of art after the Turner school, 
and highly imaginative, lofty and sympathetic, 
and he was a poet as well. Another was a no 
less noted disciple of Hippocrates of national 
fame, while a third was an eminent college 
president, author and divine who successfully 
preserved the spiritual equilibrium of the club. 
By CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER 
The fourth member was myself, who will prob¬ 
ably present a melancholy spectacle after the 
meeting following the publication of this work, 
which bears more or less upon the experiences 
of the club and its exploits, as while the club 
never succeeded in going anywhere officially as 
a club, it did go in twos and threes, bringing 
back extraordinary tales of travels in foreign 
lands, even as far as Balasora and the walled 
cities of the Orient, where it accumulated merit, 
wisdom and tales of astounding catches, even 
DR. HENRY VAN DYKE AND MAJ. F. R. BURNHAM 
at O’Melveny.’s, San Gabriel Canon, California. 
Photograph by C. F. Holder. 
greater than those of the Black Forest or the 
dulcet streams of. Walton. 
In Southern California the trout season 
opens in May, and the really good streams are 
so few and far between that they often remind 
one of the Seine or Thames during an angling 
festival, which rather detracts from the aesthetic 
delights of angling which presupposes silence 
and undisturbed pools. 
Late in the season, with the doctor member 
of the club, I found myself on the way to the 
San Gabriel River, a stream which rises at the 
foot of Mount San Antonio and drains a large 
area in the Sierra Madre, and affords some ex¬ 
cellent fly-fishing at times. It is more of a 
winter river than anything else, as during the 
summer it disappears almost entirely as it 
crosses the Canada San Gabriel on its way to 
the sea, its bed being indicated by a line of dry 
rocks below which somewhere in the bowels of 
the earth the San Gabriel is “inching along” to 
the Pacific, proving the story that some Cali¬ 
fornia rivers are bottom side up. 
We reached Azusa in my friend's car, then 
transferred our bags and rods to the stage, and 
were soon going up the road to the upper reaches 
of the San Gabriel, a road by courtesy over 
boulders. There were great stretches of sand, 
gravel and rock over which we were tortuously 
dragged, but gradually the gorge deepened and 
became a real canon cut by the river. 
On all sides rose the grim walls, now bare 
rock, now covered with verdure, grease wood, 
manzanita, wild lilac dotted here and there with 
the splendid white tufts of flowers of the blos¬ 
soming yucca, called by the poetic Mexicans the 
candlesticks of the Lord. The little river was 
ever present, winding this way and that, and 
that we forded it and frightened the trout fifty 
or more times is putting it mildly. 
Going up I saw a man fishing in a deep pool 
with a float, the red and green affair with a 
quill, the joy of my childhood, the terror to 
gudgeons, eels, catfish and other vermin who 
could be taught to ring a bell as soon as pull 
this down and out of the atmosphere. It re¬ 
minded me of a story 1 think, Marston, editor 
of the Fishing Gazette of London, tells; 
Two men utterly ignorant of fishing stopped 
at an inn in the country, and not knowing what 
to do to pass the time, the landlord loaned them 
his float line and hooks and advised them to 
go a-fishing. 
All went well. They baited hooks, cast the 
line according to instructions, lighted their pipes 
and sat down on the greensward to watch and 
wait. After a long time one angler awakened 
his friend and said: “Bill, wot d’ye s’pose the 
value of that red and yeller floater is?” 
“I dunno; why?” replied Bill. 
“Why, the bloomin' thing’s sunk,” answered 
his anxious friend. 
Gradually the pools increased in size, the . 
canon closed in, and at the end of four hours 
we reached Follows’ Inn, on a little shelf of 
verdure fifty feet above the stream which in 
spring was a mighty volume, filling the bed and 
playing havoc with the bed of rocks and bould¬ 
ers. Here was a welcome and dinner. Follows 
was a sort of clearing house for the upper 
reaches of the San Gabriel, and in the heart of 
the good fishing in good seasons, but we were 
caught in a desert storm, and the thermometer 
registered 102 or so—too hot for angling, but 
our young companion fished with success while 
the doctor and I discussed everything with the 
