Great minds, male and female, have gentle hearts. Izaak Walton handled a frog as if he loved him. Cowper would not unnecessarily hurt a worm. Lincoln upset his White House Cabinet to rescue a mother pig from a mire. Webster neglected the Supreme Court to replace a baby robin that had fallen from its nest. Moses, John the Divine, Washington, Thoreau. Audubon, Wilson, and even Napoleon and Cæsar the mighty mankillers were all of tender hearts, and all of these were—Anglers. Christ was only a fisher of men, but He loved and associated with the fishers of fishes. Walton, the father of fishers and fishing, angled for the habits of fishes more than for their hides. The capture of a fish was insignificantly incidental to the main notion of his hours abroad—his divine love of the waters, the fields, the meadows, the skies, the trees, and God's beautiful things that inhabit these. 'Tis the soul we seek to replenish, not the creel. So a Long Island dairyman's daughter views the theme, and she handles the mother and baby trout as if she loved them. Salvelinus fontinalis, little salmon of the streams, the Angler's dearly beloved brook trout—this is the dairymaid's special delight. She breeds these rainbow-hued beauties and broods over them, she feeds and fondles them, and they are to her what David's holy, fleecy flock were to him—his blessed charge by heavenly day and cardinal care at night. They feed from her hand, and play like kittens with her fingers. Cleopatra cleaved her fishes with a murderous hand and hook. Audrey cuddles her trout with a magnanimous mind and heart.
The trout, with all its famous beauty of color, grace, and outline, all its army of admirers, all the glory of its aqua-fairyland habitat, all its seeming gentility of breeding and character, is none the less a little villain at the killing game, like the less admired feline and canine and serpentine species, for he will devour the daintiest and gaudiest butterfly that ever poet sang of. Fledgling robins and bluebirds, orioles and wrens are meat and drink to him. Young chipmunks and squirrels that lose their balance in the storm fall into his ready maw. The bat, the bee, the beetle and ladybug are rich morsels to his gastric eye, and the golden lizard, the umber ant, the silvery eel, the crawling angleworm, the chirping cricket, creeping spider, the grasshopper, the hopping frog, and e'en the heavenly hummingbird are but mealtime mites to him. Perhaps the knowledge of this life-destroying trait in all the fishes made Cleopatra indifferent to the gentler mode of fishing, just as it had a softer influence over Audrey, for she, though loving both the fishes and their victims, was induced to angle and thus punish, but never kill, her finny favorites. She had heard of the artificial dry fly Anglers of Europe using the barbless hook that held the trout without pain or injury, and this she made herself, tying up dozens of somber-hued and lustrous patterns on the bent bit of bronze that formed the snare. The ruly trout who gently waver in the deep pool, satisfied with the food supplied by their fair mistress, and who behave themselves when they swim abroad in the general ponds and streams, are not molested, but the rebellious urchins who, disdaining the bits of liver and worm fed to them in plenty, go forth to slay the happy ladybug and butterfly, are made the game of the barbless hook.
Audrey has five or six thousand trout in the pond and the stream flowing into it. The surrounding country is wildly beautiful, the water being surrounded by great trees of elm, hickory, maple, beech, chestnut, walnut, and dogwood, under which is spread a rich green lawn, with here and there patches of wild shrubs, vines, and ground flowers. Rustic benches circle the water-edge oaks, and sleek deer, as tame as Belgian hares, browse on the rich grass and eat dainty morsels from the palms of their human friends. Cleopatra's marble perch basin was cold and deadly in its artificial atmosphere. Audrey's woodland trout preserve is warm and lifelike in its natural loveliness.
CHAPTER XV
THE BROOK TROUT INCOGNITO
(The "Sea Trout")