Bethune; or SUPERIOR
FISHING and GAME FISH OF THE NORTH, by Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt; or
Henshall's BOOK OF THE BLACK BASS; or the admirable disgressions of
Mr. Henry P. Wells, in his FLY-RODS AND FLY-TACKLE, and THE AMERICAN
SALMON ANGLER. Dr. William C. Prime has never put his profound
knowledge of the art of angling into a manual of technical
instruction; but he has written of the delights of the sport in OWL
CREEK LETTERS, and in I GO A-FISHING, and in some of the chapters of
ALONG NEW ENGLAND ROADS and AMONG NEW ENGLAND HILLS, with a
persuasive skill that has created many new anglers, and made many
old ones grateful. It is a fitting coincidence of heredity that his
niece, Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, is the author of the most tender
and pathetic of all angling stories, FISHIN' JIMMY.
But it is not only in books written altogether from his peculiar
point of view and to humour his harmless insanity, that the angler
may find pleasant reading about his favourite pastime. There are
excellent bits of fishing scattered all through the field of good
literature. It seems as if almost all the men who could write well
had a friendly feeling for the contemplative sport.
Plutarch, in THE LIVES OF THE NOBLE GRECIANS AND ROMANS, tells a
capital fish-story of the manner in which the Egyptian Cleopatra
fooled that far-famed Roman wight, Marc Antony, when they were
angling together on the Nile.
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