"There sat my friend with patient skill,
Attending of his trembling quill."
Sir H. Wotton.
he baited his hook with grasshoppers and locusts, and with this bait he was usually very successful, but on that particular evening he caught nothing, and soon gave up.
FISHING IN THE WEST GALLATIN.
My own success had so much surprised me that next morning I was up at six o'clock, and had caught six more white fish before breakfast.
They were cooked for us, and certainly if they afford poor sport, they are very pleasant, delicate eating. I cannot honestly take much credit to myself for these feats. Our hostess, a very severe hard-featured Calvinistic person, took all the conceit out of me at once by solemnly telling the company at the breakfast table that she could go down to the river and catch as many white fish as she wanted with a worm hooked on to a pin.
I was reminded of the angler in "The Sketch Book":—
"I recollect that after toiling and watching and creeping about ... with scarcely any success, in spite of all our admirable apparatus, a lubberly country urchin came down from the hills with a rod made from a branch of a tree, a few yards of twine, and, as Heaven shall help me! I believe a crooked pin for a hook, baited with a vile earthworm—and in half-an-hour caught more fish than we had nibbles throughout the day!"