[Illustration: 9021]
A, may I go fishing?”
That the boy should use the homely “Ma,” rather than “Mamma,” makes it
clear that he is not of our generation, although his generous crop of
freckles looks familiar, and his blue jumper, coming down to the knees,
and that battered straw hat, are sometimes duplicated in our own day.
It is fifty years across which we look, even if he does stand out so
clearly. The question is one that he asks daily, if not oftener, from
the time when the pussy-willows begin to swell in the spring-time, to
the season for comforters and woollen mittens in the late fall.
Hark! Do you hear the voice that is calling the boy? It comes distinctly
across the long stretch of years, and is as sweet and compelling now as
when it pulled at the heart of the lad on that long-ago summer day. It
is the voice of the brook. It gurgles and laughs and pleads. It says,
“Ha! ha! ha! Isn’t this a beautiful world, and this the finest day ever?
Come on, little boy, and play in my ripples. I’ve some nice peppermint
growing on my banks, and all sorts of pretty pebbles that I have washed
for you. Look sharp, now! Do you see that trout lying at the head of the
riffle? Do you know that I counted thirty-seven as big as he is between
the bridge and the Deer Pond? Come and catch ‘em!”
That brook was a part, and a large one, of the first permanent
impressions made upon the boy’s mind. It had its rise in a little pond,
concerning which there was the usual dark legend that it had no bottom.
Just what held up the water was a mystery, but the boy never doubted
the legend. It was fed by numerous springs. Vigorous and noisy from the
moment when it broke forth from its source, the brook was ten miles of
silvery laughter.
“If you’ll not go out of sight of the house you may go for an hour,”
says the mother, for she too has ears to hear the call of the brook and
can understand its charm for her lad. “Just up in the pasture-lot above
the bridge,” calls back the boy, and starts off with his pole and a
supply of angleworms wrapped up in paper. Take special notice of that
pole, for it is the joy of the boy’s heart.
[Illustration: 0023]
He had thought that a cedar sapling, peeled and thoroughly dried, made
an ideal outfit, until a friend gave him a straight cane-pole painted a
brilliant blue. In after years he owned not a few jointed rods, made
by hand of split bamboo; but the tide of joy and pride has never risen
higher in his heart than on the day when he became the possessor of the
blue cane-pole.
There is a place in the pasture-lot where the brook stretches itself out
in a long reach of still water. Above and below are rippling shallows.
Wary as is his approach, the boy sees the shy trout darting from the
riffles into the darker water. Patiently he dangles his baited hook by
the side of a sunken log, and trails it temptingly back and forth before
the coverts where the cunning fish lie hidden, but all in vain. They
have learned by experience that the presence of a blue jumper and a blue
pole spells out danger for them, and refuse to take any risks. Is this,
like so many other fishing trips, to end in failure? Watch the boy!
Laying the blue pole carefully on the ground, he rolls his sleeves
to his shoulders and, lying on his stomach on the bank of the brook,
thrusts one hand very gently into the water. With the utmost caution
he feels here and there under the overhanging sods until at last his
fingers touch something that sends an electric thrill tingling through
the length of his little body. He feels a trout, and strangely enough it
does not stir. The little fingers gently tickle the belly of the trout
as they work their way towards its head, and when they have encircled
the body at the gills they suddenly contract and the fish is thrown far
back upon the grass. This performance is repeated three or four times,
and then the trophies are gathered up in the jumper and with blue pole
over his shoulder the boy goes proudly homeward.
Many years after the boy had grown to manhood he was riding with
a friend on their way to a famous trout preserve. Naturally, the
conversation turned to fishing experiences, and he told the story of the
brook and of catching trout with his hands. The friend looked a whole
volume of incredulity and exclaimed, “Well, of all the fish-lies I ever
heard that takes the cake.” When the clubhouse was reached the keeper, a
canny Scotchman, was interviewed. “Andrew, did you ever hear of catching
trout with the hands?”
“Is it guddlin’ you mean? Mony a time. I’ve caught plenty of ‘em in the
burns when a boy.” The skeptic was silenced if not convinced. Since
that time a heated discussion of this mooted question has appeared in
a prominent sporting journal, and able arguments have been adduced to
prove the impossibility of any such feat as that ascribed to the boy.
But he knows, and the brook knows, and the blue pole knows; and those
may doubt who will.
“May I go fishin’ down in the woods?” The question came from an anxious
heart, and the boy proceeded to support his request with reasons. “The
biggest trout are down there. Edwin Crumb caught one that weighed ‘most
a pound down there last week. There are no big ones in the pasture-lot.
I’ll be careful, and I’m ‘most seven now, you know.” It was a momentous
question. For two miles after leaving the bridge the brook ran through
the woods, and the mother fancied all manner of possible and impossible
dangers to her boy lurking among those trees. But then, the lad must
be allowed to go out of her sight some time, and the day was full of
sunshine.
“If you’ll be very careful, and not go far, and be back early, you may
go.”
“Whoop!” and a small boy has disappeared from view before the permission
is fairly spoken. No blue pole this time. The brush and alders are too
thick and the pole too long. It is only a small birch limb, six feet
long, possibly, that he pulls out from under the barn as he hurries to
get out of hearing before the mother repents her rashness.
What a day that was! He has not gone far before, alongside the alders in
the swift water, almost at his feet, he captures a larger trout than
any ever granted him by the pasture-lot. He cuts a stringer from the
over-hanging alders, and with fish in one hand and pole in the other
proceeds on his adventurous way. For some time he steals along the
gravelly bed of the brook, eagerly expectant but without getting even a
bite. Certainly this is not very exciting, and his gaze begins to wander
to the woods. Is that crinkle-root? Investigation yields a plentiful
supply of the peppery plant and also three or four ground-nuts. Then the
brook pulls him back to itself and a few rods farther on he comes to a
log across the stream and partly under water. His heart gives a thump,
for this must be the place where Edwin Crumb caught his big trout. It
exactly fits the oft-repeated description. He leaves the bed of the
brook, fetches a circuit through the brush and comes out just where he
can drop his hook by the upper side of the log in the still water. The
answer to his invitation is prompt, but the captive is not as large as
was anticipated. Again and yet again he returns his lure only to meet
a cordial reception, until five fair-sized trout have been added to the
alder stringer; then activities cease.
We cannot follow him all through his eventful pilgrimage, but there is
one experience that must not go unrecorded. In a tangle of brush formed
by a tree-top which has fallen into a deep place in the stream he spies
an open space, possibly eighteen inches in diameter, where the water is
covered with scum and foam. Just the place for a big trout, but there
is no way of getting even his short pole through the brush. The line is
untied, and he goes crawling out on a limb that hangs over the brook,
and sits, at last, astride it and directly above the enticing spot.
A fresh and exceedingly fat angleworm is looped upon the hook and the
wriggling mass is cautiously dropped into the middle of the scum. It
has no sooner touched the water than there is a sharp tug and a mighty
swirl, but only the hook and the remainders of the worm come back in
answer to his pull. Another bait, and again the hook is lowered into the
pool. No, the old fellow was not pricked the first time, for here he is
again and this time firmly hooked. To balance the body on the limb when
both hands are employed in tugging on the line, is no easy task, but
at last the trout is in his hands and hugged to his breast. With the
fingers of one hand through his gills and the thumb among the sharp
teeth of the fish’s mouth, the slow journey is made back to the shore.
Glory enough for one day! The prize measures about twelve inches and is
thick through. Edwin Crumb’s trout is beaten with room to spare.
But now it dawns upon the boy that he has been gone a long time, and if
he hopes to be permitted to repeat this trip he must hurry home. He
also becomes acutely conscious of an awful vacuum in the region of
his stomach which even crinkle-root and ground-nuts will not fill. He
reasons with himself that he can reach home more quickly by striking
through the woods to the road than by retracing his way along the brook.
He is very sure that he knows the way, but his certitude evaporates
steadily as he plunges his way through the woods. Just when he admits to
himself that he has no idea in which direction the road lies, he emerges
into a clearing and sees before him a group of farm buildings. They
are certainly unfamiliar; but some one must live here and he can get
directions as to his shortest way home. Who is that in the doorway? It
cannot be Mrs. Woodman whose home is only a short half-mile from his
own? But it is, and, to make his joy complete, this is baking-day and
the good woman hands him out an apple turnover. All turnovers are good,
but that one was far and away the best ever baked. A hungry boy and an
apple turnover form a great combination.
It would not do to say that the boy and the brook were inseparable
companions, for there were long months when the Frost King had
everything his own way and the merry stream found it hard work to
maintain its appearance even on the shallow riffles. Then there were
swift flights down the hillsides for the boy, and long journeys up
again dragging his sled. Often in the long winter nights he heard the
half-smothered gurgle of the near-by brook, and wondered where the trout
lived when the thermometer was below zero.
Even in the summer days the two friends could not be together all the
time. A mile or so over the hill was the brown school-house to which the
boy must make his pilgrimages five days each week for three months at a
time, and where he learned, helped by the pictures, that three
cherries and two cherries make five cherries, and wrestled more or less
successfully with the multiplication table. The old meadow just above
the orchard was a famous place for strawberries, and many hours the boy
spent in gathering the luscious fruit while the bobolinks, perched on
swaying mullein stalks or the old rail-fence, engaged in a vocal contest
of riotous and maudlin song. Then a robin had built its nest on one of
the big beams under the meetinghouse shed on the top of the hill,
and the eggs must needs be watched and the young birds looked after.
Sometimes the children strayed into the burial ground adjoining the
church and pushed aside the myrtle to read on the little head-stone the
name of a child that had died long, long ago.
If anything could make the boy forget the brook it was his dog. Very
likely the dog had a pedigree, but it had not been recorded, and he
was as dear to the heart of the child as if his ancestors had all been
decorated with blue ribbons. Pedro and the lad knew where the woodchucks
lived on the side of the hill above the pond, and it was a red-letter
day when one of them was cut off from his hole by the two hunters and
Pedro vanquished him in a pitched battle.
The brook has run through the years and its laughter sounds now in the
ears of the writer. Somehow he hopes that the River of Life will be like
the brook, larger grown. And ever as its murmur is heard a vision of the
mother is seen.
The two grew into the boy’s heart together. In the last days when that
mother had grown weary and was waiting for rest, the son sat by her
bedside and they talked together of the long past days, of the home
under the hill, of friends gone on into the silence, and of the brook
with its sun-painted trout. She has been sleeping for many years on
the banks of the Susquehanna, lulled by the ceaseless flow of the noble
river with whose waters the waters of the brook are mingled.
[Illustration: 0033]
[Illustration: 0034]
_Here is a story of something that was shown me when I was a little boy.
Every time I think of this story it seems to me more and more charming.
For it is with some stories as it is with many people--they become
better as they grow older.... And that something which was told me when
I was a child, you shall hear too, and learn that whatever an old man
does, is generally right_.--Hans Christian Andersen, _The Wife Perfect_.
[Illustration: 0035]