hen you want it to do something out
of its regular line of work. A canoe is a good sort of a craft in its
place, and I would not wish to go into the woods without one, but it is
limited in its gifts, very limited. It can't keep its balance with any
degree of certainty when you want to stand up and fish, and it has no
sort of notion of staying in one place, unless it's hauled out on the
bank. If that canoe had been given the versatility of an ordinary
flat-bottomed john-boat I could have got along better than I did. I said
as much, and disparaged canoes generally. Eddie declared that he had
never heard me swear with such talent and unreserve. He encouraged me by
holding up each fish as he caught it and by suggesting that I come over
there. He knew very well that I couldn't get there in a thousand years.
Whenever I tried to do it that fool of a canoe shot out at a tangent and
brought up nowhere. Finally in an effort to reconstruct my rod I dropped
a joint of the noibwood overboard, and it went down in about four
hundred feet of water. Then I believe I did have a few things to say. I
was surprised at my own proficiency. It takes a crucial moment like that
to develop real genius. I polished off the situation and I trimmed up
the corners. Possibly a touch of sun made me fluent, for it was hot out
there, though it was not as hot as a place I told them about, and I
dwelt upon its fitness as a permanent abiding place for fishermen in
general and for themselves in particular. When I was through and empty I
see-sawed over to the bank and waited for Del. I believe I had a
feverish hope that they would conclude to take my advice, and that I
should never see their canoe and its contents again.

There are always compensations for those who suffer and are meek in
spirit. That was the evening I caught the big fish, the fish that Eddie
would have given a corner of his immortal soul (if he has a soul, and if
it has corners) to have taken. It was just below a big fall--Loon Lake
Falls I think they call it--and we were going to camp there. Eddie had
taken one side of the pool and I the other and neither of us had caught
anything. Eddie was just landing, when something that looked big and
important, far down the swift racing current, rose to what I had
intended as my last cast. I had the little four-ounce bamboo, but I let
the flies go down there--the fly, I mean, for I was casting with one (a
big Silver Doctor)--and the King was there, wait