ich were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore,
and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being
pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a
foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being
pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through
the mist at regular intervals as you walked halfway round the pond.

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the
well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit
the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were
fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods,
foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and
transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the
cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They
are not green like the pines, nor any gray like the stones, nor blue
like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors,
like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the
animalized _nuclei_ or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course,
are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the
animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught
here--that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling
teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this
great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in
any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a
few conclusive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal
translated before his time to the thin air of heaven.

[Illustration]

SALMON FISHING

_By_ RUDYARD KIPLING

California and I, crying for salmon, reached Portland, and the
real-estate man to whom I had been intrusted by "Portland" the insurance
man, met us in the street saying that fifteen miles away, across
country, we should come upon a place called Clackamas where we might
perchance find what we desired. And California, his coat-tails flying in
the wind, ran to a livery stable and chartered a wagon and team
forthwith. I could push the wagon about with one hand, so light was its
structure. The team was purely American--that is to say, almost human in
its intelligence and docility. Some one said that the roads were not
good on the way to Cl