FOREST AND STREAM 
549 
the Sundown stream; and it was when he re¬ 
turned from such trips and opened up the well 
filled creels wherein were closely packed iced 
layers of the pugnacious and succulent fish, the 
pursuit of which has been an art since the days 
of old Izaak; has stimulated the creation of a 
delightful line of literature, and last but not 
least has served both as a mental and physical 
tonic to jaded mind and body, that young Bill 
realized that he had not yet actually been fishing. 
Very naturally, he measured the art only by 
material returns as indicated in numbers or 
pounds avoirdupois; and was not until later 
years he absorbed the spirit that moved the 
allegorical conversation between Walton and 
Scholar, so entertainingly and delightfully set 
down by Henry van Dyke in “The Ruling 
Passion.” 
“But let me tell you that an angler’s occupation 
is a good cure for these evils, if for no other 
reason because it gently dissuadeth us from haste 
and leadeth us into those ways which are pleas¬ 
ant and those paths which are peace. For an 
angler cannot force his fortune by eagerness, nor 
better it by discontent. He must wait upon the 
weather, and the height of water, and the hunger 
of the fish, and many other accidents of which 
he has no control. If he would angle well, he 
must not be in haste. And if he be in haste, he 
will do well to unlearn it by angling, for I think 
there is no surer method.” 
****** 
“There was one Franck a trooper of Crom¬ 
well’s who wrote ill of me, saying I neither un¬ 
derstood the subjects whereof I discoursed nor 
believed the things I said, being both silly and 
pretentious. It would have been a pity if it had 
been true. There was also one Leigh Hunt, a 
maker of many books, who used one day a 
i bottle of ink whereof the gall was transfused 
into his blood, so that he wrote many hard 
words of me, setting forth selfishness and 
cruelty as if they were qualities of my disposi¬ 
tion. God knew, even then, whether these things 
were true of me; and if they were not true, it 
would have been a pity to have answered them; 
but it would have been still more of a pity to 
be angered by them. But since that time Master 
Hunt and I have met each other; yes, and 
Master Franck, too; and we have come very 
happily to a better understanding.” 
There were gathered in the clergyman’s study 
one mild, June evening, the president of an in¬ 
surance company; the village hotel keeper; a 
colonel who had served in the Union Army, and 
the clergyman himself; a collection of individuals 
that, though representing characters, occupations 
and tastes of considerable diversity, yet occasion¬ 
ally met on common ground. Trout fishermen 
all, they were; and at their informal gathering to 
agree on the details of preparation for the trip 
to the East branch the following day, were re¬ 
vealed the finer features of true democracy. 
The Calvinism of the clergyman was tightly shut 
within the glass doors of his bookcase; the 
martial dignity of the colonel had been slipped 
off at the parsonage door; the countenance of 
the insurance man, usually serious from the re¬ 
sponsibilities and problems of his official position, 
now glowed with joviality, while the bearing of 
the landlord would indicate that there was never 
^ such a thing as a complaint from a guest at table 
or bar. Questions of caste, social preferment, 
pre-eminence of fortune or superiority of edu¬ 
cation, might possess the interest of a mere 
theory to attract the students of economics; but 
they were as dead as the language Adam spoke, 
to the group that smoked and chatted in the 
dominie’s sanctum; for be it recalled, to¬ 
morrow at daylight they will be all off together 
for Johnson’s on the East branch. 
“Dominie,” said the landlord, as he playfully 
reached out and seized the ear of young Bill, 
who had been summoned to supply tumblers and 
a pitcher of water. “I suppose this young man 
will want to go trout fishing one of these days.” 
“Yes,” smilingly assented the clergyman, “he 
has the instinct surely enough, and his mind is 
already working along that line.” 
“Fish line, I take it,” facetiously interjected the 
insurance man ; whereupon the Colonel abstracted 
an imaginary bottle from his pocket and passed 
it over to the former as a reward for the perpe¬ 
tration of the shallow pun. 
“Take him along to-morrow. Take him 
along,” suggested the landlord, referring to Bill, 
whose education was not then sufficiently ad¬ 
vanced to enable him to comprehend the pleas¬ 
antry of the Colonel and the insurance man. “We 
can stow him away in a creel.’ ” 
“He might just as well go as not,” the Colonel 
seconded, as doubt of the advisability of con¬ 
senting to the proposal showed in the counte¬ 
nance of the clergyman. “Give him a pole and 
some worms, and I guess he will keep out of 
mischief.” 
The heartiness of the invitation further ex¬ 
tended by the insurance man, outweighed the re¬ 
luctance of the clergyman who at last assented 
to the proposal; and Bill accordingly was dis¬ 
missed from the room with instructions first to 
report the decision to his mother, and then to 
retire to bed—instructions that were scrupulously 
followed. Intensely delighted over the sudden 
and unexpected developments, he did not forget 
to include the human instruments in the bestowal 
of such good fortune, among those who nightly 
received his very perfunctory commendations to 
the favor of the Almighty—an incident that, no 
doubt, would have greatly amused the members 
of the group in the study had they known of it. 
Whatever may be the merits of the modern con¬ 
tention that there is no efficacy in prayer except 
in its reflex action on the individual, it is certain 
that Bill’s plea was for once serious enough 
to have secured for the dominie’s guests, an 
unusually fine lot of trout during the following 
week. So it came about that Bill went on his 
first, real fishing trip. But a short time later, 
the little group that had assembled in the 
clergyman’s study began to lessen in numbers. 
One after another, its members for the last time 
flung the leader under the overhanging banks 
of the pools and beyond the uprising boulders 
ot the Neversink, and then forever laid aside the 
rod and line. They had early discovered that 
Nature holds subtle attractions that neither the 
art of man can conceive nor his skill approach, 
for those who seek her in the proper spirit; 
and in the reasonable enjoyment thereof they 
acquire the appreciation of her bounties that is 
far too often lacking. It is long ago, now, since 
Bill had opportunity to swing a line out over 
the clear, cold waters from which, in his younger 
days he drew many a speckled trout; but it is 
not surprising that the incidents connected with 
his first experiences as a trout fisherman should 
have produced impressions that have lasted till 
the present time. Indeed, so throughly was his 
soul permeated with the joy and glories of 
those experiences, that he endeavored to set 
them forth in a manuscript that, with some cor¬ 
rections made in later years is still in existence, 
and may be found of interest to those whose 
recollections of early experiences with rod and 
line are equally fresh and satisfying. If Bill’s 
literary style fell considerably short of that con¬ 
ventionally thought worthy of approval, it was 
of no concern to him. Youthful enthusiasts are 
likely to exhibit little else than an eagerness to 
inflict their stories on a patient listener; and 
Bill even yet, is an enthusiast. This is the 
manner in which he describes his first experi¬ 
ences in waters now well known to almost every 
disciple of piscatorial art. 
Bill’s Story. 
The evening before you start for Sullivan 
County on a fishing trip, you carry most of the 
stuff you are going to take with you, up to 
Colonel Nevin’s barn, and stow it away under 
the seats of the platform spring wagon he has 
hired from Cobe Doyer the liveryman. Every 
boy that goes fishing in that part of the country 
knows what is put into that wagon: There’s 
a big lot of fishing tackle—jointed poles done up 
in cloth or leather cases; fish baskets with fly 
hooks and reels in them, and generally a package 
of smoking tobacco. There’s a grip sack for 
each of the men with woolen shirts, heavy 
stockings and wading shoes in it. Then there 
are some rubber blankets to put over you if it 
should rain on the way, and baskets of lunch to 
eat when you stop to rest the horses at noon 
time. In some of the baskets there is a flat 
bottle that has cold tea in it. Leather is sewed 
round the upper part of the bottle, and the 
lower part fits into a tin cup that you can pull 
off and drink out of. The cork is made of tin, 
too, and screws on instead of being pushed into 
the neck of the bottle like a regular cork. No 
one ever offers you or Daddy a drink of tea out 
of one of those bottles; but you don’t care for 
that. Whenever you get thirsty along the road 
you can jump off the wagon at a spring; and 
after you have had a drink, can catch up to the 
wagon and climb in over the back seat as easily 
as anything. 
After you get back to the house from Colonel 
Nevin’s barn, you have to go to bed though you 
aren’t sleepy a bit. Ma lays out the clothes you 
are to wear in the morning and tells you to go 
right to sleep, the way Mas do; but it is as hard 
to go to sleep as it is tht night before the 
Fourth. You don’t remember when you did go 
to sleep; but the first thing you know there’s 
Ma with a lamp in her hand, shaking you and 
telling you it’s time to get up. It doesn’t take 
long to put on your clothes; and when you get 
down in the dining room there’s Daddy at the 
table eating his breakfast, and Ma sitting near 
him talking but not eating anything. Daddy has 
on an old suit of clothes and a gray flannel 
shirt. He looks you over as you come into 
the room in order to see that you have on the 
right rig, and tells you to get to work at your 
breakfast. You sit down at the table; but you 
don’t feel hungry enough to eat much. Daddy 
says you are too excited to eat, but that doesn t 
appear to worry him any. 
As soon as breakfast is over Daddy hands you 
a little bundle or two to carry, and you start 
with him for the Colonel’s barn. It is pretty 
dark when you leave the house; but well up in 
the sky, looking toward the canal, you can see 
