ose
who create life, who know its humility, its tender fabric and its
infinite price, who have cherished and warmed and fed it, do not lightly
cast it into the pit.

Mothers are great in the eyes of their sons because they are knit in
our minds with all the littlenesses of life, the unspeakably dear
trifles and odds of existence. The other day I found in my desk a little
strip of tape on which my name was marked a dozen times in drawing ink,
in my mother's familiar script. My mind ran back to the time when that
little band of humble linen was a kind of passport into manhood. It was
when I went away from home and she could no longer mark my garments with
my name, for the confusion of rapacious laundries. I was to cut off the
autographed sections of this tape and sew them on such new vestments as
came my way. Of course I did not do so; what boy would be faithful to so
feminine a trust? But now the little tape, soiled by a dozen years of
wandering, lies in my desk drawer as a symbol and souvenir of that
endless forethought and loving kindness.

They love us not wisely but too well, it is sometimes said. Ah, in a
world where so many love us not well but too wisely, how tremulously our
hearts turn back to bathe in that running river of their love and
ceaseless charm!

GREETING TO AMERICAN ANGLERS

_From Master Isaak Walton_

My Good Friends--As I have said afore time, sitting by a river's side is
the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, and being out and
along the bank of Styx with my tackle this sweet April morning, it came
into my humor to send a word of greeting to you American anglers. Some
of your fellows, who have come by this way these past years, tell me
notable tales of the sport that may he had in your bright streams,
whereof the name of Pocono lingers in my memory. Sad it is to me to
recall that when writing my little book on the recreation of a
contemplative man I had made no mention of your rivers as delightsome
places where our noble art might be carried to a brave perfection, but
indeed in that day when I wrote--more years ago than I like to think
on--your far country was esteemed a wild and wanton land. Some worthy
Pennsylvania anglers with whom I have fished this water of Styx have
even told me of thirty and forty-inch trouts they have brought to
basket in that same Pocono stream, from the which fables I know that the
manners of our ancient sport have altered not a whit. I myself could