Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, in the Alleghany Mountains, I have
found a curious tradition that Ascension Day is the luckiest in the
year for fishing. On that morning the district school is apt to be
thinly attended, and you must be on the stream very early if you do
not wish to find wet footprints on the stones ahead of you.

But in fact, all these superstitions about fortunate days are idle
and presumptuous. If there were such days in the calendar, a kind
and firm Providence would never permit the race of man to discover
them. It would rob life of one of its principal attractions, and
make fishing altogether too easy to be interesting.

Fisherman's luck is so notorious that it has passed into a proverb.
But the fault with that familiar saying is that it is too short and
too narrow to cover half the variations of the angler's possible
experience. For if his luck should be bad, there is no portion of
his anatomy, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet,
that may not be thoroughly wet. But if it should be good, he may
receive an unearned blessing of abundance not only in his basket,
but also in his head and his heart, his memory and his fancy. He
may come home from some obscure, ill-named, lovely stream--some Dry
Brook, or Southwest Branch of Smith's Run--with a creel full of
trout, and a mind full of grateful recollections of flowers that
seemed to bloom for his sake, and birds that sang a new, sweet,
friendly message to his tired soul. He may climb down to "Tommy's
Rock" below the cliffs at Newport (as I have done many a day with my
lady Greygown), and, all unnoticed by the idle, weary promenaders in
the path of fashion, haul in a basketful of blackfish, and at the
same time look out across the shining sapphire waters and inherit a