FOREST AND STREAM 
423 
A Green Mountain Trout Stream 
Two Ideal Trout Streams Near New York 
By Henry Wellington Wack. 
OT one of us understood how 
he did it. We borrowed his 
female Beaverkills, his Hares 
Ears, His Wickham’s Fancy; 
but the trout merely dodged and 
sought the deeper shadows. 
We even wore our stocks back¬ 
wards, made his odd little 
grimaces at the glinting swiftwater, and imi¬ 
tated his subtle dip at the end of his cast. But 
nothing came to our creels that resplendent 
afternoon in May. 
Yet there he was; splashing through the tum¬ 
bling stream, dipping now here, now there, and 
filling his creel with brown trout and natives as 
if they were members of his own parish. It 
was exasperating! 
Away up in Sorrel, the bas Canada of his 
earlier habitat, the parish followed him in like 
manner, and maid and matron, and every seig¬ 
neur loved him for that rare quality which no 
one had ever defined because of its elusive, tran¬ 
scendent character. The doughty Vicar of the 
Willowemoc was no ordinary gentleman, even 
if he were a sporting cleric, as fond of the rod 
and gun as of the ecclesiastic function. To him 
the sky was the Great Temple; the rippling, 
purling brook the Song of Songs; nature’s 
lambent colors the robe of state; mists at dawn, 
spiced incense, and her bounty manna to the 
worthy. Peace reigned in his kindly heart; the 
perception of the martin gleamed in his shy, blue 
eyes; and if his soft white cuffs frayed over 
his ruddy knuckles, that was l e eath the notice 
of a proud little man without a wife to keep 
him presentably in repair. After all, the essen¬ 
tial life did not reside in either end of a shirt! 
Evidently nature had adopted the Vicar be¬ 
fore the church called him to her service. Yet 
no one on the Willowemoc had ever seen him 
whip the stream upon the Sabbath. There are 
some things even a well-beloved sporting Vicar 
cannot do in the edge of Sullivan County where 
the winter gossip gathers stranger forms at every 
utterance. But he could soliloquize upon the 
piscatorial lie as well on Sunday as on any other 
day. And, oh, how graciously he could meet a 
lady wading his beloved stream, and assuage her 
disappointment by slipping half a score of 
speckled little fighters into her yawning basket 
and bless the day and the sport for her with that 
indescribable flavor of speech of the Irish 
dominie at his best. 
Quite natural, therefore, that we sought the 
sight and sound of the Vicar around that quaint 
little hamlet, DeBruce, which sits snugly near 
the bank of the Willowemoc, hardby its renowned 
neighbor, the Beaverkill, in Sullivan Countv, New 
York. 
There are not over many anglers who have 
discovered DeBruce, albeit it has a host in Miss 
Ada Cooper, of the Old Homestead, whose cheer¬ 
ful hospitality forms one of its exceptional at¬ 
tractions. It is about 115 miles north of Man¬ 
hattan, over good automobile roads bj 1, way of 
Fort Lee, Tuxedo, Monroe, Goshen, Middletown, 
Liberty and Livingston Manor. Whitcomb 
Riley’s description of the Town o’ Tailholt 
almost fits it: 
“There ain’t no style in our town, hits little like 
an’ small; 
There ain’t no churches, nuther, jest the meetin’ 
house is all.” 
Come to think of it again, there is a church at 
DeBruce, for where would the little Vicar ex¬ 
pound the benevolent doctrines of that forest re¬ 
gion if there were not? And there’s more than 
