gginson describes the singular luck that a friend of his enjoyed, year
after year, in finding the rare blossoms of the 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 eaten." It would seem like taking trout out of cold
storage.

Who could find any pleasure in angling for the tame carp in the
fish-pool of Fontainebleau? They gather at the marble steps, those
venerable, courtly fish, to receive their rations; and there are
veterans among them, in ancient livery, with fringes of green moss on
their shoulders, who could tell you pretty tales of being fed by the
white hands of maids of honour, or even of nibbling their crumbs of
bread from the jewelled fingers of a princess.

There is no sport in bringing pets to the table. It may be necessary
sometimes; but the true sportsman would always prefer