I want to take it easy
and cheerful. Now I wouldn't say so much agen these fellers," said old
Peter, as he arose and put his empty pipe on a little shelf under the
porch-roof, "if it wasn't for one thing, and that is, that they think
that their kind of fishin' is the only kind worth considerin'. The way
they look down upon plain Christian fishin' is enough to rile a
hitchin'-post. I don't want to say nothin' agen no man's way of
attendin' to his own affairs, whether it's kitchen-gardenin', or whether
it's fishin', if he says nothin' agen my way; but when he looks down on
me, and grins at me, I want to haul myself up, and grin at him, if I
kin. And in this case, I kin. I s'pose the house-cat and the cat-fisher
(by which I don't mean the man who fishes for cat-fish) was both made as
they is, and they can't help it; but that don't give 'em no right to put
on airs before other bein's, who gits their meat with a square kill.
Good-night. And sence I've talked so much about it, I've a mind to go
fishin' with you to-morrow myself."

The next morning found old Peter of the same mind, and after breakfast
he proceeded to fit me out for a day of what he called "plain Christian
trout-fishin'." He gave me a reed rod, about nine feet long, light,
strong, and nicely balanced. The tackle he produced was not of the fancy
order, but his lines were of fine strong linen, and his hooks were of
good shape, clean and sharp, and snooded to the lines with a neatness
that indicated the hand of a man who had been where he learned to wear
little gold rings in his ears.

"Here are some of these feather insects," he said, "which you kin take
along if you like." And he handed me a paper containing a few artificial
flies. "They're pretty nat'ral," he said, "and the hooks is good. A man
who came here fishin' gave 'em to me, but I shan't want 'em to-day. At
this time of year grasshoppers is the best bait in the kind of place
where we're goin' to fish. The stream, after it comes down from the
mountain, runs through half a mile of medder land before it strikes into
the woods agen. A grasshopper is a little creetur that's got as much
conceit as if his jinted legs was fish-poles, and he thinks he kin jump
over this narrer run of water whenever he pleases; but he don't always
do it, and then if he doesn't git snapped up by the trout that lie along
the banks in the medder, he is floated along into the woods, where
there's always fish enough to come to the se