Should my innocent babes and my devoted wife
be left to perish of starvation while I continued my poetical
comparison of the two Williams, Shakspeare and Watson? Inhuman
selfishness! Of course it was my plain duty to sacrifice my
inclinations, and get my fly-rod, and row away across the bay, with
a deceptive appearance of cheerfulness, to catch a basket of trout
in--
III
THE SECRETS OF INTIMACY
THERE! I came within eight letters of telling the name of the
brook, a thing that I am firmly resolved not to do. If it were an
ordinary fishless little river, or even a stream with nothing better
than grass-pike and sunfish in it, you should have the name and
welcome. But when a brook contains speckled trout, and when their
presence is known to a very few persons who guard the secret as the
dragon guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, and when the
size of the trout is large beyond the dreams of hope,--well, when
did you know a true angler who would willingly give away the name of
such a brook as that? You may find an encourager of indolence in
almost any stream of the South Side, and I wish you joy of your
brook. But if you want to catch trout in mine you must discover it
for yourself, or perhaps go with me some day, and solemnly swear
secrecy.
That was the way in which the freedom of the stream was conferred
upon me.
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