s any
communion, it is nature who holds it with me through the medium of the
pole. I need to have an errand to do; some berries to pick, a patch of
potatoes to hoe (a very small patch); an engagement to keep, like
Thoreau, with a tree, if I hope to squander with profit even the laziest
summer day.

I was heading up-stream toward a deep sandy-sided pool that was bottomed,
or rather unbottomed, by the shadows of overhanging beeches. The pool was
alive with racoon-perch. A few mornings before this, a boy from a
neighboring farm had come to fish here and had found a fisher ahead of
him. He was just about to cast, when back under the limbs of the beeches
the water broke, and a mink rose to the surface with a fine perch twisting
in her jaws. Straight toward the boy she swam till within reach of his
rod, when she recognized the human in him, turned a back-dive somersault,
and vanished.

Would she be fishing again this morning? I hoped so. It was her hour--the
hour of the rising mist; visitors rarely found their way to the pool; and
I knew the appearance of the boy had given her no lasting alarm.

Floating around the bend, I pulled in among the shore bushes by a bit of
grape-vine, and sitting down upon it, made my boat fast. I had planned
the trip with the hope of seeing this mink; so I waited, quite hidden,
though having the pool in full view. An hour passed, but no mink appeared.
Another hour, and the sun was breaking upon the beeches, and the mist was
gone; yet no mink came to fish. And what mink would? Of course you must
have it in mind to see a mink fish if you wish to see anything; but the
day you really catch the mink fishing will likely be the day you went out
to watch for muskrats.

So an hour's waiting is rarely fruitless. The mink did not come, but
another and quite as expert a fisher did. All the way up the creek I had
been hearing the throaty _ghouw-bhouw_ of a great blue heron off in the
swamp. It was he that came for perch.

The flapping of the great blue heron is a sight good for the soul--an
unheard-of motion these days, so moderate, unhurried, and time-contemning!
The wing-beats of this one, as he came dangling down upon the meadow
opposite me, have often given me pause since. If I could have the wings of
the great blue heron and flap to my fishing now and again!

On alighting, however, he was instantly all nerve and tension. With the
utmost caution he came over the high sedges on his stilt-like legs to