arly morning's exhilaration. While he soon forgets the "play"
and weight of the fish captured, he never forgets the picturesque
surroundings of the struggle. He may forget the last homily he read, or
the last sermon to which he listened, but never the thrill of devout
ecstasy which came to him while wandering along some forest pathway, or
while gently floating with the current of his favorite river, bathed in
sunshine and fanned by summer zephyrs. After many days, these blissful
moments come back to him like divine benedictions. Be sure, O carping
critic, the gentle art has its spiritual and aesthetic as well as its
physical and intellectual attributes.

As a mere physical pastime, angling stands foremost among all the known
sources of pleasurable recreation. It blends active exercise with
fascinating excitement in such healthful proportions as to ensure the
fortunate participant equally against wearisome monotony and excessive
fatigue. The pure mountain air in which he is constantly enveloped is a
perpetual tonic, while the exercise it compels gives steadiness to the
nerves and solidity to the muscles.

As a mental renovator it is equally effective. There can be no
protracted lassitude while the brain is constantly quickened into
refreshing vitality by the novel and exhilarating surroundings of
mountain and forest and river, and the rise and strike and struggle of
trout or salmon.

And to those who have neither physical nor mental ailment, but who are
conscious of a spiritual need--of some more vivid appreciation of the
goodness and beneficence of the Heavenly Father than most men attain
unto while writhing under the harrow of business or bewildered by the
shallow superficialities or noisy clatter of artificial life--the quiet
places where the pursuit of the gentle art takes them, the silence and
shadow of the sombre forest, the twitter and song of the solitary
woodbird, the clear shining stars, which hang like silver lamps above
his tent or cabin, and the reposeful hush which comes to his soul like
whispered benedictions--these all tend to intensify his gratitude, to
quicken his spiritual pulse, and to give to him a higher and a keener
appreciation of his spiritual obligations.

There may be those who engage in angling only as they engage in the
coarser amusements which, for a time, divert the mind and banish
_ennui_. But all such soon weary of it, and never reach the higher
plane of the pleasant pastime. To do so