Fishin Jimmy | Page 6

story, 'sides bein' the heav'nliest
one that was ever telled. I read the hull Bible, as a duty ye know. I read
the epis'les, but somehow they don't come home to me. Paul was a
great man, a dreffle smart scholar, but he was raised in the city, I guess,
an' when I go from the gospils into Paul's writin's it 's like goin' from
the woods an' hills an' streams o' Francony into the streets of a big city
like Concord or Manch'ster."
The old man did not say much of his after life and the fruits of this
strange conversion, but his neighbors told us a great deal. They spoke
of his unselfishness, his charity, his kindly deeds; told of his visiting
the poor and unhappy, nursing the sick. They said the little children
loved him, and everyone in the village and for miles around trusted and
leaned upon Fishin' Jimmy. He taught the boys to fish, sometimes the
girls too; and while learning to cast and strike, to whip the stream, they
drank in knowledge of higher things, and came to know and love
Jimmy's "fishin' r'liging." I remember they told me of a little French
Canadian girl, a poor, wretched waif, whose mother, an unknown tramp,
had fallen dead in the road near the village. The child, an untamed little
heathen, was found clinging to her mother's body in an agony of grief
and rage, and fought like a tiger when they tried to take her away. A
boy in the little group attracted to the spot, ran away, with a child's faith
in his old friend, to summon Fishin' Jimmy. He came quickly, lifted the
little savage tenderly, and carried her away.
No one witnessed the taming process, but in a few days the pair were
seen together on the margin of Black Brook, each with a fish-pole. Her
dark face was bright with interest and excitement as she took her first
lesson in the art of angling. She jabbered and chattered in her odd
patois, he answered in broadest New England dialect, but the two quite
understood each other, and though Jimmy said afterward that it was
"dreffle to hear her call the fish pois'n," they were soon great friends
and comrades. For weeks he kept and cared for the child, and when she
left him for a good home in Bethlehem, one would scarcely have
recognized in the gentle, affectionate girl the wild creature of the past.
Though often questioned as to the means used to effect this change,
Jimmy's explanation seemed rather vague and unsatisfactory. "'T was

fishin' done it," he said; "on'y fishin'; it allers works. The Christian
r'liging itself had to begin with fishin', ye know."

III
But one thing troubled Fishin' Jimmy.
He wanted to be a "fisher of men." That was what the Great Teacher
had promised he would make the fishermen who left their boats to
follow him. What strange, literal meaning he attached to the terms, we
could not tell. In vain we--especially the boys, whose young hearts had
gone out in warm affection to the old man--tried to show him that he
was, by his efforts to do good and make others better and happier,
fulfilling the Lord's directions. He could not understand it so. "I allers
try to think," he said, "that 't was me in that boat when he come along. I
make b'l'eve that it was out on Streeter Pond, an' I was settin' in the
boat, fixin' my lan'in' net, when I see him on the shore. I think mebbe I
'm that James--for that's my given name, ye know, though they allers
call me Jimmy--an' then I hear him callin' me 'James, James.' I can hear
him jest 's plain sometimes, when the wind 's blowin' in the trees, an' I
jest ache to up an' foller him. But says he, 'I 'll make ye a fisher o' men,'
an' he aint done it. I 'm waitin'; mebbe he 'll larn me some day."
He was fond of all living creatures, merciful to all. But his love for our
dog Dash became a passion, for Dash was an angler. Who that ever saw
him sitting in the boat beside his master, watching with eager eye and
whole body trembling with excitement the line as it was cast, the flies
as they touched the surface--who can forget old Dash? His fierce
excitement at rise of trout, the efforts at self-restraint, the
disappointment if the prey escaped, the wild exultation if it was
captured, how plainly--he who runs might read--were shown these
emotions in eye, in ear, in tail, in whole quivering body! What wonder
that it all went straight to the fisher's heart of Jimmy! "I never knowed
afore they could