the bushes, just as Ralph's line flew up into space, with, alas! no
shining, spotted trout upon the hook. The new comer was a spare,
wiry man of middle height, with a slight stoop in his shoulders, a
thin brown face, and scanty gray hair. He carried a fishing-rod,
and had some small trout strung on a forked stick in one hand. A
simple, homely figure, yet he stands out in memory just as I saw
him then, no more to be forgotten than the granite hills, the
rushing streams, the cascades of that north country I love so well.

We fell into talk at once, Ralph and Waldo rushing eagerly into
questions about the fish, the bait, the best spots in the stream,
advancing their own small theories, and asking advice from their
new friend. For friend he seemed even in that first hour, as he
began simply, but so wisely, to teach my boys the art he loved.
They are older now, and are no mean anglers, I believe; but they
look back gratefully to those brookside lessons, and acknowledge
gladly their obligations to Fishin' Jimmy. But it is not of these
practical teachings I would now speak; rather of the lessons of
simple faith, of unwearied patience, of self-denial and cheerful
endurance, which the old man himself seemed to have learned,
strangely enough, from the very sport so often called cruel and
murderous. Incomprehensible as it may seem, to his simple
intellect the fisherman's art was a whole system of morality, a
guide for every-day life, an education, a gospel. It was all any
poor mortal man, woman, or child, needed in this world to make him
or her happy, useful, good.

At first we scarcely realized this, and wondered greatly at certain
things he said, and the tone in which he said them. I remember at
that first meeting I asked him, rather carelessly, "Do you like