He may climb down to "Tommy's
Rock" below the cliffs at Newport (as I have done many a day with my
lady Greygown), and, all unnoticed by the idle, weary promenaders in
the path of fashion, haul in a basketful of blackfish, and at the
same time look out across the shining sapphire waters and inherit a
wondrous good fortune of dreams--
"Have glimpses that will make him less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
But all this, you must remember, depends upon something secret and
incalculable, something that we can neither command nor predict. It
is an affair of gift, not of wages. Fish (and the other good things
which are like sauce to the catching of them) cast no shadow before.
Water is the emblem of instability. No one can tell what he shall
draw out of it until he has taken in his line. Herein are found the
true charm and profit of angling for all persons of a pure and
childlike mind.
Look at those two venerable gentlemen floating in a skiff upon the
clear waters of Lake George. One of them is a successful statesman,
an ex-President of the United States, a lawyer versed in all the
curious eccentricities of the "lawless science of the law." The
other is a learned doctor of medicine, able to give a name to all
diseases from which men have imagined that they suffered, and to
invent new ones for those who are tired of vulgar maladies.
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