for cent."

He laid up treasures, but they were not in this world. In fact, though
the kindest of husbands, I fear he was not what the country people call
a "good provider," except in providing trout in their season, though it
is doubtful if there was always fat in the house to fry them in. But he
could tell you they were worse off than that at Valley Forge, and that
trout, or any other fish, were good roasted in the ashes under the
coals. He had the Walton requisite of loving quietness and
contemplation, and was devout withal. Indeed, in many ways he was akin
to those Galilee fishermen who were called to be fishers of men. How he
read the Book and pored over it, even at times, I suspect, nodding over
it, and laying it down only to take up his rod, over which, unless the
trout were very dilatory and the journey very fatiguing, he never
nodded!

II

The Delaware is one of our minor rivers, but it is a stream beloved of
the trout. Nearly all its remote branches head in mountain springs, and
its collected waters, even when warmed by the summer sun, are as sweet
and wholesome as dew swept from the grass. The Hudson wins from it two
streams that are fathered by the mountains from whose loins most of its
beginnings issue, namely, the Rondout and the Esopus. These swell a
more illustrious current than the Delaware, but the Rondout, one of the
finest trout streams in the world, makes an uncanny alliance before it
reaches its destination, namely, with the malarious Wallkill.

In the same nest of mountains from which they start are born the
Neversink and the Beaverkill, streams of wondrous beauty that flow
south and west into the Delaware. From my native hills I could catch
glimpses of the mountains in whose laps these creeks were cradled, but
it was not till after many years, and after dwelling in a country where
trout are not found, that I returned to pay my respects to them as an
angler.

My first acquaintance with the Neversink was made in company with some
friends in 1869. We passed up the valley of the Big Ingin, marveling at
its copious ice-cold springs, and its immense sweep of heavy-timbered
mountain-sides. Crossing the range at its head, we struck the Neversink
quite unexpectedly about the middle of the afternoon, at a point where
it was a good-sized trout stream. It proved to be one of those black
mountain brooks born of innumerable ice-cold springs, nourished in
the shade, and shod, as it were, with thick-matt