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 the way they should go are
broken into by a deacon with his nose peeled coining 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.