Learning to Cast
The question as to which is the more beautiful, the rainbow or the brook trout, has often been debated with much feeling by their respective champions, and will doubtless remain undecided so long as both may be taken from clear-flowing brooks, where sky and landscape blend with the soul of man to make him as supremely happy as it is ever the lot of mortals to become. For it is the joy within and around you that supplies a mingled pleasure far deeper than that afforded by the mere beauty of the fish. You will remember that "Doctor Boteler" said of the strawberry, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." So, I have said at different times of both brook and rainbow trout, "Doubtless God could have made a more beautiful fish than this, but doubtless God never did."
Scene on the Gibbon River
Above Kepler Cascade
During a recent trip through the Rocky Mountains I remained over night in a town of considerable mining importance. In the evening I walked up the main street passing an almost unbroken line of saloons, gambling houses and dance halls, then crossed the street to return, and found the same conditions on that side, except that, if possible, the crowds were noisier. Just before reaching the hotel, I came upon a small restaurant in the window of which was an aquarium containing a number of rainbow trout. One beautiful fish rested quivering, pulsating, resplendent, poised apparently in mid air, while the rays from an electric light within were so refracted that they formed an aureola about the fish, seemingly transfiguring it. I paused long in meditation on the scene, till aroused from my revery by the blare of a graphophone from a resort across the street. It sang:
"Last night as I lay sleeping, there came a dream so fair,
I stood in old Jerusalem, beside the temple there;
I heard the children singing and ever as they sang
Methought the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing
Hosanna in the highest, hosanna to your king."
I made the sign of Calvary in the vapor on the glass and departed into the night pondering of many things.