ensible purpose I have
brought home more game than my creel showed. In fact, in my mature
years I find I got more of nature into me, more of the woods, the wild,
nearer to bird and beast, while threading my native streams for trout,
than in almost any other way. It furnished a good excuse to go forth;
it pitched one in the right key; it sent one through the fat and
marrowy places of field and wood. Then the fisherman has a harmless,
preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant that nothing fears. He blends
himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle
and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream;
its impulse bears him along. At the foot of the waterfall he sits
sequestered and hidden in its volume of sound. The birds know he has no
designs upon them, and the animals see that his mind is in the creek.
His enthusiasm anneals him, and makes him pliable to the scenes and
influences he moves among.

Then what acquaintance he makes with the stream! He addresses himself
to it as a lover to his mistress; he wooes it and stays with it till he
knows its most hidden secrets. It runs through his thoughts not less
than through its banks there; he feels the fret and thrust of every bar
and boulder. Where it deepens, his purpose deepens; where it is
shallow, he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance
and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days.

I am sure I run no risk of overpraising the charm and attractiveness of
a well-fed trout stream, every drop of water in it as bright and pure
as if the nymphs had brought it all the way from its source in crystal
goblets, and as cool as if it had been hatched beneath a glacier. When
the heated and soiled and jaded refugee from the city first sees one,
he feels as if he would like to turn it into his bosom and let it flow
through him a few hours, it suggests such healing freshness and
newness. How his roily thoughts would run clear; how the sediment would
go downstream! Could he ever have an impure or an unwholesome wish
afterward? The next best thing he can do is to tramp along its banks
and surrender himself to its influence. If he reads it intently enough,
he will, in a measure, be taking it into his mind and heart, and
experiencing its salutary ministrations.

Trout streams coursed through every valley my boyhood knew. I crossed
them, and was often lured and detained by them, on my way to and from
school. We bathed in them