the domestic arrangements of our little cottage, and coveting the
splendours of a grander establishment. An afternoon on the brook was
a good cure for that folly. Or suppose a day came when there was an
imminent prospect of many formal calls. We had an important engagement
up the brook; and while we kept it we could think with satisfaction of
the joy of our callers when they discovered that they could discharge
their whole duty with a piece of pasteboard. This was an altruistic
pleasure. Or suppose that a few friends were coming to supper, and there
were no flowers for the supper-table. We could easily have bought them
in the village. But it was far more to our liking to take the children
up the brook, and come back with great bunches of wild white honeysuckle
and blue flag, or posies of arrowheads and cardinal-flowers. Or suppose
that I was very unwisely and reluctantly labouring at some serious
piece of literary work, promised for the next number of THE SCRIBBLER'S
REVIEW; and suppose that in the midst of this labour the sad news came
to me that the fisherman had forgotten to leave any fish at our cottage
that morning. Should my innocent babes and my devoted wife be left to
perish of starvation while I continued my poetical comparison of the two
Williams, Shakspeare and Watson? Inhuman selfishness! Of course it was
my plain duty to sacrifice my inclinations, and get my fly-rod, and row
away across the bay, with a deceptive appearance of cheerfulness, to
catch a basket of trout in--

III. THE SECRETS OF INTIMACY

THERE! I came within eight letters of telling the name of the brook,
a thing that I am firmly resolved not to do. If it were an ordinary
fishless little river, or even a stream with nothing better than
grass-pike and sunfish in it, you should have the name and welcome. But
when a brook contains speckled trout, and when their presence is known
to a very few persons who guard the secret as the dragon guarded the
golden apples of the Hesperides, and when the size of the trout is large
beyond the dreams of hope,--well, when did you know a true angler who
would willingly give away the name of such a brook as that? You may find
an encourager of indolence in almost any stream of the South Side, and
I wish you joy of your brook. But if you want to catch trout in mine
you must discover it for yourself, or perhaps go with me some day, and
solemnly swear secrecy.

That was the way in which the freedom of the st