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Show FISHERMAN'S LUCK human limitations, "There is a trout now, and a good one too, if I can but hold hinn!" This reminds me that we left H. E. G-, a few sentences back, playing his unexpected salmon, on a trout-rod, in the Saguenay. Four times that great fish leaped into the air; twice he suffered the pliant reed to guide him toward the shore, and twice ran out again to deeper water. Then his spirit awoke within him: he bent the rod like a willow wand, dashed toward the middle of the river, broke the line as if it had been packthread, and sailed triumphantly away to join the white porpoises that were tumbling in the tide. "Whe-e-ew," they said, "whe-e-ew! psha-a-aw!" blowing out their breath in long, soft sighs as they rolled about like huge snowballs in the black water. But what did H. E.G- say? He sat him quietly down upon a rock and reeled in the remnant of his line, uttering these remarkable and Christian words: "Those porpoises," said he, "describe the situation rather mildly. But it was good fun while it lasted." Again I remembered a saying of Walton: "Well, 34 FISHERMAN'S LUCK Scholar, you must endure worse luck sometimes, or you will never make a good angler." Or a good man, either, I am sure. For he who knows only how to enjoy, and not to endure, is illfitted to go down the stream of life through such a world as this. I would not have you to suppose, gentle reader, that in discoursing of fisherman's luck I have in mind only those things which may be taken with a hook. It is a parable of human experience. I have been thinking, for instance, of Walton's life as well as of his angling: of the losses and sufferings that he, the firm Royalist, endured when the Commonwealth men came marching into London town; of the consoling days that were granted to him, in troublous times, on the banks of the Lea and the Dove and the New River, and the good friends that he made there, with whom he took sweet counsel in adversity; of the little children who played in his house for a few years, and then were called away into the silent land where he could hear their voices no longer. I was thinking how quietly and peaceably he lived through it all, 35 |