"Deceptive," interrupted Willibert, "and decidedly immoral!"

"Only a little," continued Cotton Mather, "a very little! Then you go
down to the bottom of the pool with a hand-line----"

"A hand-line!" murmured the listener, half-shuddering in feigned
horror.

"Yes, a hand-line," the speaker went on firmly, "a long, light
hand-line, without a sinker, baited with a single, clean angle-worm,
and loosely coiled in your left hand. You cast the hook with your right
hand, and it falls lightly without a splash, a hundred feet up stream.
Then you pull the line in very gently, just fast enough to keep it from
sinking to the bottom. When the trout bites, you strike him and land
him by hand, without the help of rod or landing-net or any other
mechanical device. Try this once, and you will see whether it is easier
than throwing the fly. I reckon this was the way the Apostle Peter
fished when he was told to 'go to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up
the fish that first cometh up.' It is the only true Apostolic method of
fishing."

"But, my dear fellow," answered the other, "the text doesn't say that
it was a bait-hook. It may have been a fly-hook. Indeed the text rather
implies that, for it speaks of the fish as 'coming up,' and that means
rising to the fly."

"Wa'al," said Cap'n Gray, rising slowly and knocking out the ashes of
his pipe on the edge of his chair, "I can't express no jedgment on the
merits of this debate, seein' I've never been much of a fisher. But ef
I wuz, my fust ch'ice'd be to git the fish, an' enny way that got 'em
I'd call good."

The arrival of the Springtime, releasing the streams from their
imprisonment of ice, and setting the trout to leaping in every
meadow-brook and all along the curving reaches of the swift Lirrapaug,
transferred this piscatorial contest from the region of discourse to
the region of experiment. The rector proved himself a competitor worthy
of the minister's mettle. Although at first he was at some disadvantage
on account of his slight acquaintance with the streams, he soon
overcame this by diligent study; and while Hopkins did better work on
the brooks that were overhung with trees and bushes, Jones was more
effective on the open river and in the meadow-streams just at sundown.
They both made some famous baskets that year, and were running neck and
neck in the angling field, equal in success.

But in the field of love, I grieve to say, their equality was of
another kind. Bot