Newspaper reports of the proceedings of the Sunday School Association
encamped on Lake Monona, at Madison, give about as many particulars
of big catches of fish as of sinners. The delegates divide their time
catching sinners on spoon-hooks and bringing pickerel to repentance.
Some of the good men hurry up their prayers, and while the “Amen”
is leaving their lips they snatch a fish-pole in one hand and a
baking-powder box full of angle worms in the other, and light out for
the Beautiful Beyond, where the rock bass turn up sideways, and the
wicked cease from troubling.
Discussions on how to bring up children in the way they should go are
broken into by a deacon with his nose peeled coming up the bank with a
string of perch in one hand, a broken fish-pole in the other, and a pair
of dropsical pantaloons dripping dirty water into his shoes.
It is said to be a beautiful sight to see a truly good man offering up
supplications from under a wide-brimmed fishing hat, and as he talks of
the worm that never, or hardly ever dies, red angle worms that have dug
out of the piece of paper in which they were rolled up are crawling out
of his vest pocket.
The good brothers compare notes of good places to do missionary work,
where sinners are so thick you can knock them down with a club, and then
they get boats and row to some place on the lake where a local liar has
told them the fish are just sitting around on their haunches waiting for
some one to throw in a hook.
This mixing religion with fishing for black bass and pickerel is a
good thing for religion, and not a bad thing for the fish. Let these
Christian statesmen get “mashed” on the sport of catching fish, and they
will have more charity for the poor man who, after working hard twelve
hours a day for six days, goes out on a lake Sunday and soaks a worm in
the water and appeases the appetite of a few of God's hungry pike, and
gets dinner for himself in the bargain. While arguing that it is wrong
to fish on Sunday, they will be brought right close to the fish, and
can see better than before, that if a poor man is rowing a boat across a
lake on Sunday, and his hook hangs over the stern, with a piece of liver
on, and a fish that nature has made hungry tries to steal his line and
pole and liver, it is a duty he owes to society to take that fish by the
gills, put it in the boat and reason with it, and try to show it that
in leaving its devotions on a Sunday and snapping at a poor man's only
hook, it was setting a bad example.
These Sunday school people will have a nice time, and do a great amount
of good, if the fish continue to bite, and they can go home with their
hearts full of the grace of God, their stomachs full of fish, their
teeth full of bones; and if they fall out of the boats, and their
suspenders hold out, they may catch a basin full of eels in the basement
of their pantaloons.
But we trust they will not try to compete with the local sports in
telling fish stories. That would break up a whole Sunday school system.