that, in a
sandy place, you steal up behind his tail to him, so that he cannot set
eyes on you, for his head is up-stream always, and there you see him
abiding still, clear, and mild, and affable. Then, as he looks so
innocent, you make full sure to prog him well, in spite of the wry of
the water, and the sun making elbows to everything, and the trembling
of your fingers. But when you gird at him lovingly, and have as good as
gotten him, lo! in the go-by of the river he is gone as a shadow goes,
and only a little cloud of mud curls away from the points of the fork.

A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as an iceberg, went
my little self that day on man's choice errand--destruction. All
the young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken out God's
certificate, and meant to have the value of it; every one of them was
aware that we desolate more than replenish the earth. For a cow
might come and look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a
kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys over
the channel, or sit on a dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into his
breast-feathers; even an otter might float downstream likening himself
to a log of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and his
oily eyes peering quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, as
it does when a sample of man comes.

Now let not any one suppose that I thought of these things when I was
young, for I knew not the way to do it. And proud enough in truth I
was at the universal fear I spread in all those lonely places, where I
myself must have been afraid, if anything had come up to me. It is
all very pretty to see the trees big with their hopes of another year,
though dumb as yet on the subject, and the waters murmuring gaiety,
and the banks spread out with comfort; but a boy takes none of this to
heart; unless he be meant for a poet (which God can never charge upon
me), and he would liefer have a good apple, or even a bad one, if he
stole it.

When I had travelled two miles or so, conquered now and then with cold,
and coming out to rub my legs into a lively friction, and only fishing
here and there, because of the tumbling water; suddenly, in an open
space, where meadows spread about it, I found a good stream flowing
softly into the body of our brook. And it brought, so far as I could
guess by the sweep of it under my knee-caps, a larger power of clear
water than the Lynn itself had;