ith a rod,
and were more or less interested in the sport. We often started after an
early breakfast, and, taking our luncheon with us, remained the whole
day long absorbed in our quiet occupation.

My mother was perfectly unobservant of all rules of angling, in her
indiscriminate enthusiasm, and "took to the water" whether the wind
blew, the sun shone, or the rain fell; fishing--under the most
propitious or unpropitious circumstances--was not, indeed, necessarily,
catching fish, but still, fishing; and she was almost equally happy
whether she did or did not catch any thing. I have known her remain all
day in patient expectation of the "glorious nibble," stand through
successive showers, with her clothes between whiles drying on her back,
and only reluctantly leave the water's edge when it was literally too
dark to see her float.

Although we all fished, I was the only member of the family who
inherited my mother's passion for it, and it only developed much later
in me, for at this time I often preferred taking a book under the trees
by the river-side, to throwing a line; but towards the middle of my life
I became a fanatical fisherwoman, and was obliged to limit my waste of
time to one day in the week, spent on the Lenox lakes, or I should
infallibly have wandered thither and dreamed away my hours on their
charming shores or smooth expanse daily.

I have often wondered that both my mother and myself (persons of
exceptional impatience of disposition and irritable excitability of
temperament) should have taken such delight in so still and monotonous
an occupation, especially to the point of spending whole days in an
unsuccessful pursuit of it. The fact is that the excitement of hope,
keeping the attention constantly alive, is the secret of the charm of
this strong fascination, infinitely more than even the exercise of
successful skill. And this element of prolonged and at the same time
intense expectation, combined with the peculiarly soothing nature of the
external objects which surround the angler, forms at once a powerful
stimulus and a sedative especially grateful in their double action upon
excitable organizations.

CHAPTER V.

I have said that we all more or less joined in my mother's fishing mania
at Weybridge; but my sister, then a girl of about eleven years, never
had any liking for it, which she attributed to the fact that my mother
often employed her to bait the hook for her. My sister's "tender-h