Fishing with a Worm | Page 6

cotton mill was
free to make his own choice of a calling; but he was never pardoned for
bankrupting the mill. If one is bound to be a low man rather than an
impractical idealist, he should at least make sure of his vulgar success.
Is all this but a disguised defense of pot-hunting? No. There is no
possible defense of pot-hunting, whether it be upon a trout brook or in
the stock market. Against fish or men, one should play the game fairly.
Yet for that matter some of the most skillful fly-fishermen I have
known were pot-hunters at heart, and some of the most prosaic-looking
merchants were idealists compared to whom Shelley was but a
dreaming boy. All depends upon the spirit with which one makes his
venture. I recall a boy of five who gravely watched his father tramp off
after rabbits,--gun on shoulder and beagle in leash. Thereupon he
shouldered a wooden sword, and dragging his reluctant black kitten by
a string, sallied forth upon the dusty Vermont road "to get a lion for
breakfast." That is the true sporting temper! Let there be but a fine
idealism in the quest, and the particular object is unessential. "A true
fisherman's happiness," says Mr. Cleveland, "is not dependent upon his
luck." It depends upon his heart.
No doubt all amateur fishing is but "play,"--as the psychologists
soberly term it: not a necessary, but a freely assumed activity, born of

surplusage of vitality. Nobody, not even a carpenter wearied of his job,
has to go fishing unless he wants to. He may indeed find himself
breakfast-less in camp, and obliged to betake himself to the brook,--but
then he need not have gone into the woods at all. Yet if he does decide
to fish, let him
"Venture as warily, use the same skill, Do his best, ..."
whatever variety of tackle he may choose. He can be a whole-souled
sportsman with the poorest equipment, or a mean "trout-hog" with the
most elaborate.
Only, in the name of gentle Izaak himself, let him be a complete angler;
and let the man be a passionate amateur of all the arts of life, despising
none of them, and using all of them for his soul's good and for the joy
of his fellows. If he be, so to speak, but a worm-fisherman,--a follower
of humble occupations, and pledged to unromantic duties,--let him still
thrill with the pleasures of the true sportsman. To make the most of dull
hours, to make the best of dull people, to like a poor jest better than
none, to wear the threadbare coat like a gentleman, to be outvoted with
a smile, to hitch your wagon to the old horse if no star is handy,--this is
the wholesome philosophy taught by fishing with a worm. The fun of it
depends upon the heart. There may be as much zest in saving as in
spending, in working for small wages as for great, in avoiding the
snapshots of publicity as in being invariably first "among those
present." But a man should be honest. If he catches most of his fish
with a worm, secures the larger portion of his success by commonplace
industry, let him glory in it, for this, too, is part of the great game. Yet
he ought not in that case to pose as a fly-fisherman only,--to carry
himself as one aware of the immortalizing camera,--to pretend that life
is easy, if one but knows how to drop a fly into the right ripple. For life
is not easy, after all is said. It is a long brook to fish, and it needs a
stout heart and a wise patience. All the flies there are in the book, and
all the bait that can be carried in the box, are likely to be needed ere the
day is over. But, like the Psalmist's "river of God," this brook is "full of
water," and there is plenty of good fishing to be had in it if one is
neither afraid nor ashamed of fishing sometimes with a worm.

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