entirely miss the significance of the gold and silver spots and the
glancing iridescent hues. The trout is dark and obscure above, but
behind this foil there are wondrous tints that reward the believing
eye. Those who seek him in his wild remote haunts are quite sure to get
the full force of the sombre and uninviting aspects,--the wet, the
cold, the toil, the broken rest, and the huge, savage, uncompromising
nature,--but the true angler sees farther than these, and is never
thwarted of his legitimate reward by them.

I have been a seeker of trout from my boyhood, and on all the
expeditions in which this fish has been the ostensible purpose I have
brought home more game than my creel showed. In fact, in my mature
years I find I got more of nature into me, more of the woods, the wild,
nearer to bird and beast, while threading my native streams for trout,
than in almost any other way. It furnished a good excuse to go forth;
it pitched one in the right key; it sent one through the fat and
marrowy places of field and wood. Then the fisherman has a harmless,
preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant that nothing fears. He blends
himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle
and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream;
its impulse bears him along. At the foot of the waterfall he sits
sequestered and hidden in its volume of sound. The birds know he has no
designs upon them, and the animals see that his mind is in the creek.
His enthusiasm anneals him, and makes him pliable to the scenes and
influences he moves among.

Then what acquaintance he makes with the stream! He addresses himself
to it as a lover to his mistress; he wooes it and stays with it till he
knows its most hidden secrets. It runs through his thoughts not less
than through its banks there; he feels the fret and thrust of every bar