double rueanemone. It seems that this man needed only to take a
walk in the suburbs of any town, and he would come upon a bed of
these flowers, without effort or design. I envied him his good
fortune, for I had never discovered even one of them. But the next
morning, as I strolled out to fish the Swiftwater, down below Billy
Lerns's spring-house I found a green bank in the shadow of the wood
all bespangled with tiny, trembling, twofold stars,--double
rueanemones, for luck! It was a favourable omen, and that day I
came home with a creel full of trout.

The theory that Adam lived out in the woods for some time before he
was put into the garden of Eden "to dress it and to keep it" has an
air of probability. How else shall we account for the arboreal
instincts that cling to his posterity?

There is a wilding strain in our blood that all the civilization in
the world will not eradicate. I never knew a real boy--or, for that
matter, a girl worth knowing--who would not rather climb a tree, any
day, than walk up a golden stairway.

It is a touch of this instinct, I suppose, that makes it more
delightful to fish in the most insignificant of free streams than in
a carefully stocked and preserved pond, where the fish are brought
up by hand and fed on minced liver. Such elaborate precautions to
ensure good luck extract all the spice from the sport of angling.
Casting the fly in such a pond, if you hooked a fish, you might
expect to hear the keeper say, "Ah, that is Charles, we will play
him and put him back, if you please, sir; for the master is very
fond of him,"--or, "Now you have got hold of Edward; let us land him
and keep him; he is three years old this month, and just ready to be