738 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 8, 1909. 
The Brook and the Angler. 
The brook takes its rise in the long, boggy 
meadow belonging to the dairy farm. This 
meadow is full of springs fed by the wooded 
hills along its border, and each little trickle, 
oozing through the black soil, unites with an¬ 
other like itself, and still others, until a per¬ 
ceptible rill is formed. If you search long 
enough, you may perhaps be able to say what 
one among these little rills is the main source 
of the brook. But the decision would be diffi¬ 
cult. There is a network of them radiating like 
the ribs of a fan. But at any rate the brook 
has come into being before one reaches the wire 
fence at the lower end of the meadow, and glid¬ 
ing silently along beneath a rude 
log bridge, it passes into other 
meadows, knee deep with round 
tussocks of tall grass and still 
oozy with springs which add 
their small contributions to its 
cold waters. For a mile or more 
through these meadows the brook 
winds on so tortuously that it is 
often possible without changing 
one’s position to cast a fly into 
either loop of one of the bends. 
On these upper reaches there is 
scarcely a bush on either bank— 
nothing but long streamers of 
grass and occasional clusters of 
thrifty cowslips yellow with blos¬ 
soms. 
The bed of the stream is fine 
yellow sand, broken here and 
there by pieces of water-logged 
drift. The current shifts from 
bank to bank, as the curving 
course directs, and at each sharp 
turn there is a deep hole under 
the overhanging turf. As we 
near the end of the meado^ys, 
the ground becomes more and 
more spongy and the brook winds 
in ever wider curves until at last 
it loses itself in the mill pond. 
So far the brook has been 
silent, but now a change comes. 
In the pond the waters reach their full volume, 
and with the rush over the dam and through 
the sluices the brook finds the voice with which 
it clamors in many tones for more than half a 
mile below the mill. Rocks withstand its steep¬ 
ening course, and brooks, like some men, are 
driven to outcry by obstacles in their paths. The 
hills that stood aloof on the margins of the 
upper meadows now lose their reserve and draw 
close on either side to the water. With the hills 
come the trees—poplars, rnaples, balsams, even 
an occasional white pine fortunately spared be¬ 
cause its position by the brook gave it a knotted 
trunk or because it rang hollow to the axe of 
the lumberman. Alders and birches lean over 
the water and the barks are soft with mosses 
and ferns. Through the cool shadows the 
brook races on, now tumbling white over some 
rocky barrier, now murmuring about the curve 
of a pebbly riffle or glooming black beneath 
some ancient windfall. And ever it fills the 
wood with the many voices so dear to the 
heart of the angler. 
But again comes silence. At the edge of the 
woods the brook glides quietly into another 
meadow, and yet, as though loath to relinquish 
utterly the grateful shadows of the wood, it 
draws with it a fringe of sheltering alders. The 
meadow grass reappears, the ground becomes 
more and more soggy, and detached pools of 
stagnant water appear, from which an occas¬ 
ional duck rushes upward in startled flight or 
a red-winged blackbird noisily proclaims that 
her nest is hard by. The current of the brook 
is perceptibly slackening and deepening, and 
soon it assumes a canal-like regularity, like 
those streams one sees in the salt marshes when 
the tide is out. We have reached the margin 
of the swamp in which the brook loses itself 
before merging in the lake. The whitening- 
skeletons of ten thousand trees murdered by 
the lumbermen who years ago raised the level 
of the river and lake, are now all that remain 
of the beautiful forest through which the brook 
once finished its course. 
The brook contains trout. Why else should 
an angler describe it? And especially is it a 
delight to the fly-fisherman, for so much of its 
course lies through meadows that casting is 
easy, and yet lest it be over-eas}^ there is ample 
opportunity for difficult work on the wooded 
stretch below the dam. Thus there is scope for 
every device of the gentle art. 
The brook is known and loved by many ang¬ 
lers, but among them all there is one who has 
known it longest and perhaps loves it best and 
so deserves the title of The Angler. At least 
that is what his friends call him, and I suspect 
that there is a bit of envy in it, for he is cer¬ 
tainly first in the affections of the brook if sub¬ 
stantial gifts of its fishy wealth are any proof. 
And who will doubt that brooks are friends? 
Every angler can tell you of m|j,ny that he re¬ 
gards as such. He knows them so well that he 
can describe every pool and rock to you. Even 
in the dark he has often followed unerringly 
the familiar way along their banks and through 
their riffles, where a ford is necessary. He 
knows just where to find the vantage stones 
beneath the current, just how much line he 
needs to make a given cast. And such intimacy 
must needs beget friendship. 
As for our angler there is no doubt about 
his feeling for the brook. Just accompany him, 
as I have done, when he revisits his old friend 
after a year-long absence. The first week of 
June has brought the day to which he has been 
looking forward for months with many an im¬ 
patient glance at the calendar—the day when 
pressing duties are over for a season and he 
is free for the real business of life, the com¬ 
forting art of angling. As he crosses the bit 
of stony pasture, which separates 
the brook from the railroad em¬ 
bankment along which he has 
come, you may see that he is a 
strongly built man, past forty, 
whose clean shaven face reveals 
that kindliness which is charac¬ 
teristic of all true brothers of 
the angle. His clothes are old 
and comfortable, from the stained 
felt hat upon his head to the 
long woolen stockings and old 
hob-nailed shoes which he pre¬ 
fers for wading. Under his left 
arm hangs his creel from which 
peeps the handle of a little land¬ 
ing net. In his hand he carries 
a light fly-rod. The dull browns 
and grays of his attire seem to 
fit harmoniously into the land¬ 
scape. The very birds recognize 
in him a friend as he approaches 
the edge of the woods where he 
intends to begin fishing. He 
pauses to listen carefully to the 
clear half-tones of a white-throat 
singing unafraid on a neighbor¬ 
ing ' alder. From near and far 
the thrushes, too, salute him, the 
veery, the hermit and last and 
most expressive of the Northern 
woods, the olive-back. He be¬ 
takes himself leisurely to the 
prostrate trunk of a huge white birch to joint 
his rod and select his flies, a little spinner and 
a coachman. Just a year before he had per¬ 
formed the same task seated on this same log. 
Then after making a cache of his lunch in a 
clump of alders—for he expects to return to 
this spot—he sets to work before the mildly 
wondering gaze of the pasturing cows. The 
cows are part of the brook’s domain and do 
not alarm the trout. Indeed, a responsive rise 
comes even when the flies drop within six feet 
of some member of the herd as she leisurely 
crops the grass on the bank above. The cows 
have well worn paths through the alders, and 
when the angler meets one there, she faces him 
for a long moment, seeming to expect him to 
give place. It is her path, she says, not his. 
But man rules here as elsewhere, and with slow 
reluctance and a deep “whoof” she steps aside. 
The brook is here too deep to wade, and as 
the banks are three or four feet high, the angler 
keeps back and bends low, casting a long line 
or availing himself of some friendly clump of 
alders. Along one deep run he progresses for 
twenty or thirty yards on his knees, taking ut- 
IN EVER-WIDENING CURVES. 
