steel, straight as a pine,
unimpeachable in quality, and unlimited in quantity. God bless them!
Late may they return to heaven, and never want a man to stand before
the Lord forever!

Some people have conscientious scruples about fishing. I respect them.
I had them once myself. Wantonly to destroy, for mere sport, the
innocent life, in lake and river, seemed to me a cruelty and a shame.
But people must fish. Now, then, how shall your theory and practice be
harmonized? Practice can't yield. Plainly, theory must. A year ago,
I went out on a rock in the Atlantic Ocean, held a line--just to see
how it seemed,--and caught eight fishes; and every time a fish came up,
a scruple went down. They weren't very large,--the fishes, I mean, not
the scruples, though the same adjective might, perhaps, not unjustly be
applied to both,--and I don't know that the enormity of the sin depends
at all upon the size of the fish; but if it did, so entirely had my
success convinced me of man's lawful dominion over the fish of the sea,
that I verily believe, if a whale had hooked himself on the end of my
line, I should have hauled him up without a pang.

I do not insist that you shall accept my system of ethics. Deplorable
results might follow its practical application in every imaginable
case. I simply state facts, leaving the "thoughtful reader" to
generalize from them whatever code he pleases.

Which facts will partially account for the eagerness with which I, one
morning, seconded a proposal to go a-fishing in a river about fourteen
miles away. One wanted the scenery, another the drive, a third a
chowder, and so on; but I--I may as well confess--wanted the
excitement, the fishes, the opportunity of displaying my piscatory
prowess. I enjoyed in anticipation the masculine admiration and
feminine chagrin that would accompany the beautiful, fat, shining,
speckled, prismatic trout into my basket, while other rods waited in
vain for a "nibble." I resolved to be magnanimous. Modesty should
lend to genius a heightened charm. I would win hearts by my humility,
as well as laurels by my dexterity. I would disclaim superior skill,
attribute success to fortune, and offer to distribute my spoil among
the discomfited. Glory, not pelf, was my object. You imagine my
disgust on finding, at the end of our journey, that there was only one
rod for the party. Plenty of lines, but no rods. What was to be done?
It was proposed to improvise rods