Mountain Waters 
Following a Rugged Stream in Summer in Quest of 
things, a great scholar recently 
wrote a brief paragraph in one 
of his letters that shows how poignant- 
ly the soul of man responds to the 
lure of beauty of natural landscapes, 
even the exquisite artistry of his 
brother man’s creations. “Ah, what 
a world!” he said, in glowing words, 
“with roses, sunrise and sunset, Shake- 
speare, Beethoven, brooks, mountains, 
birds, maids, ballads— why can’t it 
last, why can’t everybody have a good 
share?” 
What virgin unselfishness! What 
lyric rapture for one who seemed a 
cold, monastic, bookish pedant, whose 
life was steeped in dusty volumes and 
learned words, whose world was a 
book shelf where lived the endeavors 
of a thousand dead men. On second 
thought, with no far flight of imagina- 
tion, I pondered deeply how that 
learned man must have loved nature, 
her beauty and all her mysteries. Was 
this outburst of feeling one of desire 
and anticipation, the aftermath of the 
joys of true realization—I know not. 
In speaking of Shakespeare, 1 placed 
the scholar. In Beethoven the musi- 
cian, and in roses and the sun’s jour- 
ney, the maids and ballads, he had a 
poetic strain. Deep is the river of 
man’s soul and strange the cargoes 
plying the current. Suddenly, with no 
apparent effort of snaring thought a 
captive, I solved his words. Speaking 
of brooks, mountains, birds, with roses 
and sunsets and sunrises, it was plain 
as day. He was a scholar with pisca- 
torial leanings, a man who loved fish- 
ing and brook trout. Trout!—why 
not? What other fish haunts the wild, 
talkative, mountain brooks? And as 
roses are emblems of summer, brides, 
and poets, the man was a summer 
I‘ the ecstasy of loving beautiful 
fisherman. And it is of summer 
fishing I write. 
APPEL fishing, when snows. still 
linger under the conifers and 
winds ache with a wintry chillness, 
is a red-blooded affair appealing only 
to the adventurous. In May when the 
angler pauses to light his pipe, he is 
appalled by the splendor of countless 
shrubs all in flower and_ suffering 
under a burden of heavy odors. In 
June it is the rose and its allies, in 
July the field flowers, in August the 
Page 469 
‘and wondered. 
By EDWIN C. HOBSON 
lilies. Whatever the month, the period 
of growth or fulfillment, the lone 
prowler of brooks walks a way more 
beautiful than some tropic road. In 
June, nature is a maid of seventeen, 
gay, sweetly beautiful. In July and 
August she trends toward maturity 
where softness of line and color and 
mood predominate, and life assumes 
the full measure of enchantment and 
prophecy. 
Having taken on their raiment of 
green leaves, the orchards were work- 
ing toward production. The flowers of 
April, the arrival of nesting birds, the 
pulse and greens of earth made a poet 
of me, but the first wetting of a line 
in a chosen stream claimed a fisher- 
man. And in fishing I listened and 
watched and felt with all senses, and 
when Summer stepped from the 
charms and entanglement of Spring 
I walked with her. In step with 
the world, and laugh at cities and 
men. Is not this life, life at the 
pinnacle? 
FARMERS along the lowland roads 
and men of the mountain valleys 
predicted a cold summer, and science 
warned of an errant Gulf current or 
spots on the sun, but Summer came 
as summers ever do, regardless of 
crow-footed eyes and deep-searching 
lenses. Summer laughed at men and 
almanacs and instruments. 
When one hectic day was sweeping 
to a noisy close and gray dusks were 
drifting up the spruce gulches, I noted 
the drinking of the sun beyond the 
crown of Moosilauke—a sign of rain 
to-morrow. Last night and the night 
before, down in the grassy meadows 
along the communicative Pemigewas- 
set, the spiders wove their gossamer 
nets to snare the dew—a sign of dry 
weather. When the elements and 
things of earth disagree, let man take 
the bull by the horns. Long after day 
had fled, when darkness ruled the 
mountain country and lights were go- 
ing out down the road, I took a last 
look at the world eastward, the sky 
above. No moon shone. The stars 
gleamed with a thousand points of 
light, and like torches shone white 
Altair and glistening Vega. I looked 
long into the inky depths of Coalsack, 
To-morrow, I spoke 
to the world asleep, I go a-fishing. 
Trout—and Nature’s Offerings 
Up on the headwaters of 4 bawling 
stream I waited in the chill and gray- 
ness of dawn. Eastward, on that 
ragged, spruce-tipped line wedding 
earth and sky, the summer morning 
hurdled the mountains and ran over 
the valley. The sun followed, the 
golden light spreading like a benedic- 
tion. In the forest, shadows and si- 
lence held sway, and the hour was one 
of coolness, pungency, dripping with 
a rain of dew. In the dark conifers 
down the slope, a whippoorwill gushed 
in belated song, and the sudden calls 
seemed to penetrate every nook and 
shadow of the forest. Once, in a lull 
of wind and water, I caught the faint 
far piping of some thrush, then the 
solemn roll of boughs filled the forest 
and song was a lost thing, like remem- 
brance in a broken dream. 
From a meager assortment of flies I 
selected one somewhat less bedraggled 
than the others, a little dingy-white 
miller for the gloom and long shadows 
over the water. I am not a fly fisher— 
yet. Still a tyro, a beginner at a new 
and strange art, my efforts have been 
awkward, but courage has held good, 
and such persistency caught trout. 
Such fishing, I suppose, must throw 
the aesthetic angler into a spasmodic 
fit and the hew-to-the-line fisherman 
to abyssmal laughter. Why worry 
over theories—wet flies, dry flies, 
sunken flies—when fish rise to the flies 
I use. As Van Dyke says, 
“For flies as ‘wet,’ or flies as ‘dry,’ 
I do not care a whit—not I!” 
And so in a merry mood, he truthfully 
adds, 
“They take their flies just as they wish, 
Upon the surface or below, 
Precisely why we do not know.” 
Let men argue and speculate. Four 
centuries have not improved the arti- 
ficial fly, and trout still rise to some 
awful-looking lures. Strange fish is 
the trout, and stranger still, the minds 
of men. 
LOOKED down stream, down the 
watery avenue of flashing shadows 
and wavering half-lights. A lance of 
pallid sunlight laid athwart the stream, 
snowy foam-bells swept away from 
