e was no more exciting moment in my boyhood than when
a pickerel swallowed the frog's leg on my hook and began to retreat with
it under the lily pads. In the stream also were horned pouts, perch,
shiners and that silly little fish we called "kivers," for which my
earliest fishing was done with a bent pin. I was naturally capacitated
for fishing by my fondness for silence and solitude. The mystery of
water drew me from one pool to another and a constant expectancy of a
larger fish than had ever been caught. I was not aware that words could
make him as big as one chose; but I had pictured him in my mind in all
his immense and shining length. What I most wished to catch was a
leviathan; my mother when reading the word in the Bible had told me it
meant some kind of great fish, the largest in the world. Once indeed I
thought I had him on my hook, but it proved only a sunken log. Of
stillness and solitude I had my fill strolling along the banks of the
river. It seemed like Sunday without the requirements imposed upon me by
that day, stiff shoes and Sunday-school. I became as still as the nature
around me, stepping softly and almost hushing my breath. If I might
describe in one word the sensation which I commonly experienced in my
earliest lonely intercourse with stream and forest it was a breathless
expectation, made up in part of fear, in part of a vague hope of
discovering something wonderful. This quest never wearied nor
disheartened me; I only became more eager in its pursuit the more it
evaded me; another search, another day and it would be revealed. What
would be revealed? There are no words given to man in which he can
clearly portray the striving of the spirit for that which shall resemble
and satisfy its visions and aspirations. The child sees these visions
and feels these aspirations and strives to put his finger upon them;
they exist for him as physical objects which he wishes to capture and
carry home to his mother with a proud consciousness of his valor. As
soon as she had praised my handful of flowers, my pocketful of nuts, or
little string of fish they palled upon me and I began immediately to
feel an uneasy sense of disappointment, of disillusion, knowing I had
miserably failed. The bombastic brag to my mother and her praise were a
kind of mockery and falsehood. Illusion followed illusion, defeat
followed defeat, yet the morrow was ever to be their healer and
compensation. How often have I been soothed by the wa