his pipe on the edge of his chair, "I can't express no jedgment on the
merits of this debate, seein' I've never been much of a fisher. But ef
I wuz, my fust ch'ice'd be to git the fish, an' enny way that got 'em
I'd call good."
The arrival of the Springtime, releasing the streams from their
imprisonment of ice, and setting the trout to leaping in every
meadow-brook and all along the curving reaches of the swift Lirrapaug,
transferred this piscatorial contest from the region of discourse to
the region of experiment. The rector proved himself a competitor worthy
of the minister's mettle. Although at first he was at some disadvantage
on account of his slight acquaintance with the streams, he soon
overcame this by diligent study; and while Hopkins did better work on
the brooks that were overhung with trees and bushes, Jones was more
effective on the open river and in the meadow-streams just at sundown.
They both made some famous baskets that year, and were running neck and
neck in the angling field, equal in success.
But in the field of love, I grieve to say, their equality was of
another kind. Both of them were seriously smitten with the beauty of
Lena Gray, the old Captain's only daughter, who had just come home from
Smith College, with a certificate of graduation, five charming new
hats, and a considerable knowledge of the art of amateur dramatics. She
was cast for the part of leading lady in Samaria's play that summer,
and Mr. Jones and Mr. Hopkins were both secretly ambitious for the post
of stage-manager. But it fell to Orlando Cutter, who lived on the farm
next to the Grays. The disappointed candidates consoled themselves by
the size of the bouquets which they threw to the heroine at the close
of the third act. One was of white roses and red carnations; the other
was of pink roses and lilies of the valley. The flowers that she
carried when she answered the final curtain-call, curiously enough,
were damask roses and mignonette. A minute observer would have noticed
that there was a fine damask rose-bush growing in the Cutter's back
garden.
There was no dispute of methods between Jones and Hopkins in the
amatorial realm, like that which divided them in matters piscatorial.
They were singularly alike in attitude and procedure. Both were very
much in earnest; both expressed their earnestness by offerings
presented to the object of their devotions; both hesitated to put their
desires and hopes into words, because they could not do it in any but a
serious way, and they feared to invite failure by a premature avowal.
So, as I said, they stood in love upon an equal footing, but not an
equality of success; rather one of doubt, delay and dissatisfaction.
Miss Gray received their oblations with an admirable impartiality. She
liked their books, their candy, their earnest conversation, their mild
clerical jokes, without giving any indication which of them she liked
best. As her father's daughter she was free from ecclesiastical
entanglements; but of course she wanted to go to church, so she
attended the Episcopal service at eleven o'clock and became a member of
Mr. Hopkins's Bible Class which met at twelve thirty. Orlando Cutter
usually drove home with her when the class was over.
You can imagine how eagerly and gravely Cotton Mather and Willibert
considered the best means of advancing their respective wishes in
regard to this young lady; how they sought for some gift which should
not be too costly for her to accept with propriety, and yet
sufficiently rare and distinguished to indicate her supreme place in
their regards. They had sent her things to read and things to eat; they
had drawn upon Hitchfield in the matter of flowers. Now each of them
was secretly casting about in his mind for some unique thing to offer,
which might stand out from trivial gifts, not by its cost, but by its
individuality, by the impossibility of any other person's bringing it,
and so might prepare the way for a declaration.
By a singular, yet not unnatural, coincidence, the solution presented
itself to the imagination of each of them (separately and secretly of
course) in the form of Leviathan.
I feel that a brief word of explanation is necessary here. Every New
England village that has any trout-fishing in its vicinity has also a
legend of a huge trout, a great-grandfather of fishes, præternaturally
wise and wary, abnormally fierce and powerful, who lives in some
particular pool of the principal stream, and is seen, hooked, and
played by many anglers but never landed. Such a traditional trout there
was at Samaria. His lair was in a deep hole of the Lirrapaug, beside an
overhanging rock, and just below the mouth of the little spring-brook
that divided the Gray's farm from the Cutter's. But this trout was not
only traditional, he was also real. Small boys had fished for him, and
described vividly the manner in which their hooks had been carried
away,--but that does not count. Jags Witherbee declared that he had
struggled with him for nearly an hour, only to fall exhausted in the
rapids below the pool while the trout executed a series of somersaults
in the direction of Simsville,--but that does not count. What really
counts is that two reputable clergymen testified that they had seen
him. He rose once to Jones's fly when he was fishing up the river after
dusk, and Hopkins had seen him chase a minnow up the brook just before
sunrise. The latter witness averred that the fish made a wake like a
steamboat, and the former witness estimated his weight at a little
short of five pounds,--both called him Leviathan, and desired to draw
him out with a hook.
Now the thought that secretly occurred to each of these worthy young
men, as I say, not unnaturally, but with a strange simultaneousness
which no ordinary writer of fiction would dare to invent, was this:
"Catch Leviathan on the last day of the trout-season and present him to
Miss Gray. That will be a famous gift, and no one else can duplicate
it."
The last day of the season was July 31st. Long before daybreak the Rev.
Cotton Mather Hopkins stole away from the manse, slipping through the
darkness noiselessly, and taking the steep path by Bushy Brook towards
the valley of the Lirrapaug. In one pocket was his long, light,
hand-line, carefully coiled, with a selected sneck-bend hook of
tempered steel made fast to the line by the smallest and firmest of
knots. In the other pocket was a box of choice angle-worms, dug from
the garden two days before, and since that time kept in moss and
sprinkled with milk to make them clean and rosy. It was his plan to go
down stream a little way below the rock-pool, wait for daylight, and
then fish up the pool slowly until he reached Leviathan's lair and
caught him. It was a good plan.
The day came gently and serenely; a touch of gray along the eastern
horizon; a fading of the deep blue overhead, a paling of the stars, a
flush of orange in the east; then silver and gold on the little
floating clouds, and amber and rose along the hill-tops; then lances of
light showing over the edge of the world and a cool flood of diffused
radiance flowing across field and river. It was at this moment, before
there was a shadow to be found in the scene, that the bait-fisherman
stepped into the rapid below the pool and began to wade slowly and
cautiously upward along the eastern bank. Not a ripple moved before
him; his steps fell on the rocky bottom as if he had been shod with
velvet. The long line shot out from his swinging hand and the bait fell
lightly on the pool,--too far away yet to reach the rock. Another cast
follows, and still another, but without any result. The rock is now
reached, but the middle of it projects a little into the pool, and
makes a bend or bay which is just out of sight from the point where the
fisherman stands. He gathers his line in his left hand again and makes
another cast. It is a beauty. The line uncoils itself without a hitch
and the bait curves around the corner, settling down beside the rock as
if a bit of sand had fallen from the top of the bank.
But what is that dark figure kneeling on the eastern bank at the head
of the pool? It is the form of Willibert Beauchamp Jones, B.D. He has
assumed this attitude of devotion in order that Leviathan may not see
him from afar; but it also serves unconsciously to hide him from the
fisherman at the foot of the pool. Willibert is casting the fly very
beautifully, very delicately, very accurately, across the mouth of the
spring-brook towards the upper end of the rock. The tiny royal coachman
falls like a snowflake on the water, and the hare's ear settles like a
bit of thistledown two feet beyond it. Nearer and nearer the flies come
to the rock, until at last they cover the place where the last cast of
the hand-line fell. There is a flash of purple and gold in the water, a
great splash on the surface,--Leviathan has risen; Willibert has struck
him; the royal coachman is fast in his upper lip.
At the same instant the fisherman at the lower end of the pool feels a
tightening of his line. He gives it a quick twitch with his right hand,
and prepares to pull in with his left. Leviathan has taken the bait;
Cotton Mather has struck; the hook is well fastened in the roof of the
fish's mouth and the sport begins.
Willibert leaps to his feet and moves towards the end of the point.
Cotton Mather, feeling the heavy strain on his line, wades out towards
the deeper part of the pool. The two fishermen behold each other, in
the moment of their common triumph, and they perceive what lies between
them.
"Excuse me," said Hopkins, "but that is my fish. He must have taken my
bait before he rose to the fly, and I'll be much obliged to you if
you'll let go of him."
"I beg your pardon," replied Jones, "but it's quite evident that he
rose to my fly before you felt him bite at your bait; and as I struck
him first and hooked him first, he is my fish and I'll thank you to
leave him alone."
It was a pretty situation. Each fisherman realized that he was called
upon to do his best and yet unable to get ahead of the other without
danger to his own success,--no time for argument surely! Yet I think
they would have argued, and that with fierceness, had it not been for a
sudden interruption.
"Good morning, gentlemen!" said the voice of Orlando Cutter, as he
stepped from the bushes at the mouth of the brook, with a landing-net
in his hand, "I see you are out early to-day. I came down myself to
have a try for the big fish, and Miss Gray was good enough to come with
me."
The rosy, laughing face of the girl emerged from the willows. "Good
morning, good morning," she cried. "Why it's quite a party, isn't it?
But how wet you both are, Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Jones,--did you fall in
the water? And you look vexed, too! What is the matter? Oh, I see, both
your lines are caught fast in the bottom of the pool,--no, they are
tangled together"--(at this the fish gave a mighty splash and a rush
towards the shore,)--"oh, Orlando, it's a fish, and such a beauty!"
The trout, bewildered and exhausted by the double strain upon him,
floundered a little and moved into the shallow water at the mouth of
the brook. Orlando stepped down and quietly slipped the landing-net
under him.
"I see it is a fish," he said, "and it seems to be caught with a bait
and a fly, but it certainly is landed with a net. So in that case,
gentlemen, as your claims seem to be divided, I will take the liberty
of disengaging both your hooks, and of begging Miss Gray to accept this
Leviathan, as--may I tell them?--she has just accepted me."
By this time the newly risen sun was shining upon the ripples of the
Lirrapaug River and upon the four people who stood on the bank shaking
hands and exchanging polite remarks. His glowing face was bright with
that cheerful air of humourous and sympathetic benevolence with which
he seems to look upon all our human experiences of disappointment and
success.
The weary anglers found some physical comfort, at least, in the cool
glasses of milk which Miss Gray poured for them as they sat on the
verandah of the farmhouse. On their way up the hill, by the pleasant
path which followed Bushy Brook, these two brethren who were so much of
one mind in their devotion to their fishing and who differed only in
regard to the method to be pursued, did not talk much, but they felt
themselves nearer to each other than ever before. Something seemed to
weave between them the delicate and firm bonds of a friendship
strengthened by a common aim and chastened by a common experience of
disappointment. They could afford to be silent together because they
were now true comrades. I shall always maintain that both of them
received a great benefit from Leviathan.
THE ART OF LEAVING OFF
It was a hot August Sunday, one of those days on which art itself must
not be made too long lest it should shorten life. A little company of
us had driven down from our hotel on the comparatively breezy hill to
attend church in the village. The majority chose to pay their devotions
at the big yellow meeting-house, where the preacher was reputed a man
of eloquence; but my Uncle Peter drew me with him to the modest gray
chapel, at the far end of the street, which was temporarily under the
care of a student in the winter-school of theology, who was wisely
spending his vacation in the summer-school of life. Some happy
inspiration led the young man to select one of Lyman Abbott's shortest
and simplest sermons,--itself a type of the mercy which it
commended,--and frankly read it to us instead of pronouncing a
discourse of his own. The result of this was that we came out of chapel
at a quarter past eleven in a truly grateful and religious frame of
mind.
But our comrades were still detained in the yellow meeting-house; and
while the stage-coach waited for them in the glaring fervour of noon,
my Uncle Peter and I climbed down from our seats and took refuge on the
grass, in the shadow of the roundhead maples that stood guard along the
north wall of the Puritan sanctuary. The windows were open. We could
see the rhythmic motion of the fan-drill in the pews. The pulpit was
not visible; but from that unseen eminence a strident, persistent voice
flowed steadily, expounding the necessity and uses of "a baptism of
fire," with a monotonous variety of application. Fire was needful for
the young, for the middle-aged, for the old, and for those, if any, who
occupied the intermediate positions. It was needful for the rich and
for the poor, for the ignorant and for the learned, for church-members,
for those who were "well-wishers" but not "professors," and for
hardened sinners,--for everybody in fact: and if any class or condition
of human creatures were omitted in the exhaustive analysis, the
preacher led us to apprehend that he was only holding them in reserve,
and that presently he would include them in the warm and triumphant
application of his subject. He was one of those preachers who say it
all, and make no demands upon the intelligence of their hearers.
Meantime the brown-and-yellow grasshoppers crackled over the parched
fields, and the locusts rasped their one-stringed fiddles in the trees,
and the shrunken little river complained faintly in its bed, and all
nature was sighing, not for fire, but for water and cool shade. But
still the ardent voice continued its fuliginous exhortations, until the
very fans grew limp, and the flowers in the hats of the village girls
seemed to wilt with fervent heat.
My Uncle Peter and I were brought up in that old-fashioned school of
manners which discouraged the audible criticism of religious exercises.
But we could not help thinking.
"He has just passed 'Secondly,'" said I, "and that leaves two more main
heads, and a practical conclusion of either three or five points."
My Uncle Peter said nothing in answer to this. After a while he
remarked in an abstract, disconnected way: "I wonder why no school of
divinity has ever established a professorship of the Art of Leaving
Off."
"The thing is too simple," I replied; "theological seminaries do not
concern themselves with the simplicities."
"And yet," said he, "the simplest things are often the most difficult
and always the most important. The proverb says that 'well begun is
half done.' But the other half is harder and more necessary,--to get a
thing well ended. It is the final word that is most effective, and it
is something quite different from the last word. Many a talker, in the
heat of his discussion and his anxiety to have the last word, runs
clear past the final word and never gets back to it again."
"Talking," said I, "is only a small part of life, and not of much
consequence."
"I don't agree with you," he answered. "The tongue is but a little
member, yet behold how great a fire it kindles. Talking, rightly
considered, is the expression and epitome of life itself. All the other
arts are but varieties of talking. And in this matter of the importance
of the final touch, the point at which one leaves off, talking is just
a symbol of everything else that we do. It is the last step that costs,
says the proverb; and I would like to add, it is the last step that
counts."
"Be concrete," I begged, "I like you best that way."
"Well," he continued, "take the small art of making artificial flies
for fishing. The knot that is hardest to tie is that which finishes off
the confection, and binds the feathers and the silk securely to the
hook, gathering up the loose ends and concealing them with invisible
firmness. I remember, when I first began to tie flies, I never could
arrive at this final knot, but kept on and on, winding the thread
around the hook and making another half-hitch to fasten the ones that
were already made, until the alleged fly looked like a young ostrich
with a sore throat.
"Or take the art of sailing a boat. You remember Fanny Adair? She had a
sublime confidence in herself that amounted to the first half of
genius. She observed that, given a wind and a sail and a rudder, any
person of common sense could make a boat move along. So she invited a
small party of equally inexperienced friends to go out with her in a
cat-boat on Newport harbour. The wind was blowing freshly and steadily
towards the wharf, and neither the boat-keeper nor I suspected any lack
in Fanny's competence as she boldly grasped the tiller and started out
in fine style, beating merrily to and fro across the bay. I went up
town and came back at the appointed hour of six o'clock to meet the
party. The wind was still blowing freshly and steadily, straight onto
the wharf, but they had not returned. They were beating up and down,
now skimming near to the landing, now darting away from it. We called
them to come in. I saw a look of desperation settle on Fanny's face.
She slacked away the main-sheet, put the boat before the wind, held the
tiller straight, and ran down upon the wharf with a crash that cracked
the mast and tumbled the passengers over like ten-pins in a strike. 'I
knew I could sail the old thing,' said Fanny, 'but I didn't think it
would be so hard to stop her!'"
"I see what you mean," said I. "Isn't the same difficulty often
experienced by after-dinner speakers and lecturers, and speculators on
the stock-market, and moral reformers, and academic co-ordinators of
the social system of the universe?"
"It is," he answered. "They can sail the sea of theory splendidly, but
they don't know how to make a landing. Yet that is really the thing
that everybody ought to learn. No voyage is successful unless you
deliver the goods. Even in a pleasure-voyage there must be a fit time
and place for leaving off. There is a psychological moment at which the
song has made its most thrilling impression, and there the music should
cease. There is an instant of persuasion at which the argument has had
its force, and there it should break off, just when the nail is driven
home, and before the hammer begins to bruise the wood. The art lies in
discovering this moment of cessation and using it to the best
advantage. That is the fascination of the real 'short story' as told by
Hawthorne, or Poe, or Stevenson, or Cable, or De Maupassant, or Miss
Jewett, or Margaret Deland. It reaches the point of interest and stops.
The impression is not blurred. It is like a well-cut seal: small, but
clear and sharp. You take the imprint of it distinctly. Stockton's
story of 'The Lady or the Tiger' would not gain anything by an addition
on the natural history of tigers or the psychological peculiarities of
ladies.
"That is what is meant by the saying that 'brevity is the soul of
wit,'--the thing that keeps it alive. A good joke prolonged degenerates
into teasing; and a merry jest with explanations becomes funereal. When
a man repeats the point of his story it is already broken off. Somebody
said of Mr. Gladstone's oratory that it was 'good, but copious.'
Canaries sing well, but the defect of their music is its abundance. I
prefer the hermit-thrush to the nightingale, not because the thrush's
notes are sweeter, but because he knows when to leave off, and let his
song vanish, at the exquisite moment, into the silence of mysterious
twilight."
"You seem to be proving," I said, "what most men will admit without
argument, that 'enough is as good as a feast.'"
"On the contrary," he replied, "I am arguing against that proverb.
Enough is not as good as a feast. It is far better. There is something
magical and satisfying in the art of leaving off. Good advice is
infinitely more potent when it is brief and earnest than when it
dribbles into vague exhortations. Many a man has been worried into vice
by well-meant but wearisome admonitions to be virtuous. A single word
of true friendly warning or encouragement is more eloquent than volumes
of nagging pertinacity, and may safely be spoken and left to do its
work. After all when we are anxious to help a friend into the right
path, there is not much more or better that we can say than what Sir
Walter Scott said, when he was a-dying, to his son-in-law Lockhart: 'Be
a good man, my dear, be a good man.' The life must say the rest."
"You are talking as seriously," said I, "as if you were a preacher and
we were in a church."
"Are we not?" said he, very quietly. "When we are thinking and talking
of the real meaning of life it seems to me that we are in the Temple.
Let me go on a moment longer with my talk. We often fancy, in this
world, that beautiful and pleasant things would satisfy us better if
they could be continued, without change, forever. We regret the ending
of a good 'day off.' We are sorry to be 'coming out of the woods'
instead of 'going in.' And that regret is perfectly natural and all
right. It is part of the condition on which we receive our happiness.
The mistake lies in wishing to escape from it by a petrification of our
joys. The stone forest in Arizona will never decay, but it is no place
for a man to set up his tents forever.
"The other day, a friend was admiring the old-fashioned house where I
live. ''Tis _a good camp_,' said I, 'plenty of wood and water, and I
hope it's on the right trail.'
"Many of our best friends have gone ahead of us on that trail. Why
should we hold back? The fairest things in the world and the finest are
always in transition: the bloom of tender Spring disappearing in the
dark verdure of Summer; the week of meadow-rue and nodding lilies
passing as silently as it came; the splendid hues of the autumnal hills
fading like the colours on a bubble; the dear child, whose innocence
and simplicity are a daily joy to you, growing up into a woman. Would
you keep her a child forever, her head always a little lower than your
heart? Would you stand where you are to-day, always doing the same
things, always repeating the same experiences, never leaving off? Then
be thankful that the Wisdom and Goodness by which this passing show is
ordered will not suffer you to indulge your foolish wish. The wisest
men and women are not those who cling tenaciously to one point of life,
with desperate aversion to all change, but those who travel cheerfully
through its mutations, finding in every season, in every duty, in every
pleasure, a time to begin and a time to cease, and moving on with
willing adaptation through the conclusion of each chapter to the end of
the book.