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Show A Fragment Anent Trout Fishing:. " and be quiet; and go a-angling." - IZAAK WALTON. Gentle Izaak! Ho has been dead these many years, but his disciples are still faithful. When the cares of business lie heavy and the sound of wheels jarring on cobbled streets grows painful, one's fingers itch for the rod. Every man. who has ever gotten the love of the stream in his blood feels this longing. It comes to me every year with the first breath of spring. There is something In the sweetness of the air, the growing things, the "'robin in the greening grass" that voices it. Duties that have before held in their performance something of pleasure become irksome, and practical prac-tical thoughts of the day's work are replaced by dreamy pictures of a tent by the side of a mountain moun-tain stream close enough to hear the water's singing in the night. Two light bamboo rods rest against the ten pole, and a little column of smoke rising straight up through the branches marks the supper fire. Izaak Walton never went a-fishing as we do here in the West we who have the mountains and the fresh air so boundlessly. He who is sponsor spon-sor for all that It gentle In agling missed much that is best in the sport by living too early. Ho did not experience the exquisite pleasure of wad- j f ffifjpM ing down mountain streams in supposedly water- 1 $ jff vf IS proof boots, feeling the water trickle in coolingly; j I i i nor did he know the joy of casting a gaudy fly far ,Jff ahead, letting it drift, insect-like, over that black Sllllria hole by the tree stump, and then, feeling the sea m M M fM weed line slip through his Angers to the whirr of i tI 1 ' the reel. And, at the end of the day, supper over, lflf$iii', he did not squat around a big campfire and light i Ipjflj tm his pipe, the silent darkness of the mountains jL , jj a f gathering round, and a basket full of willow- i'Jy ifl packed trout hung in the clump of pines by the 111 Jtjl tent. Izaak's idea of fishing did not comprenend , 1 fl such joy. With a can of worms and a crude f T J U hook, he passed the day by quiet streams, thread- 7 jl ing the worms on his hook and thinking kindly of . V kM all things. The day's meditations over, he went j f ' ,i I back to the village, and, hayhap, joined a few ! tyfm kindred souls over a tankard of ale at the Sign, EWi V'ltB of the Red Lobster. Slji', To my mind, there is no real sport in any ill! lm kind of fishing but with a fly. This sitting on the llf &jM bank of a muddy stream with your bait sunk, f Wrl !$ waiting for a bite, may be conducive to gentle-i IJtwILffl ness and patience of spirit, but it has not the joy 11 $1 wfa of action in which a healthy man revels. How il m H!H much more sport it is to clamber over fallen logs v rlH that stretch far out a-stream, to wade slipping ; R ! over buolders and let your fly drop caressingly on jt,, ,jfl riffles and swirling eddies and still holes! It Is J f worth all the work to see the gleam of a silver jiffy Iff M side as a half-pounder rises, and, with a flop,- lliijSH takes the fly excitedly to the bottom. And then liMsIH the nervous thrill as, with a deft turn of the wrist,' iffl Hj9 you hook his securely whoever has felt that lljirtlfl thrill cannot forget it. It will come back to him lllfjllfl in his law office when he should be thinking of lliiJH other things; and with it will come a longing for Elllittfl that dear remembered stream and the old days. Kllil JM That is the hold trout fishing takes on a man. J rm WALDEMAR YOUNG. It'! : ' I If' ' 1 |