ea-trout in the tide of
the greater Saguenay. There, in the salt water, where men say the salmon
never take the fly, H. E. G----, fishing with a small trout-rod, a poor,
short line, and an ancient red ibis of the common kind, rose and hooked
a lordly salmon of at least five-and-thirty pounds. Was not this pure
luck?

Pride is surely the most unbecoming of all vices in a fisherman. For
though intelligence and practice and patience and genius, and many
other noble things which modesty forbids him to mention, enter into his
pastime, so that it is, as Izaak Walton has firmly maintained, an art;
yet, because fortune still plays a controlling hand in the game, its net
results should never be spoken of with a haughty and vain spirit. Let
not the angler imitate Timoleon, who boasted of his luck and lost it. It
is tempting Providence to print the record of your wonderful catches in
the sporting newspapers; or at least, if it must be done, there should
stand at the head of the column some humble, thankful motto, like "NON
NOBIS, DOMINE." Even Father Izaak, when he has a fish on his line, says,
with a due sense of human limitations, "There is a trout now, and a good
one too, IF I CAN BUT HOLD HIM!"

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
pack-thread, 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, 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 ill-fitted to go down the stream of life through
such a world as this.

I would not have