“Here is the scale, Tom.”
Tom held up the fish, with the scale-hook in the gill-cover.
“Thir—ty—two—pounds, miss.”
“Do let me see,” she said, and examined her captive with curiosity.
“A fine young man, by the neb of his lower jaw,” said her father. “You don’t like the gaffing: I saw that. Be assured that lingering hours of slow exhaustion in the nets at the mouth of the river are far worse. You could let the fish go; you could refrain from fishing; you need not eat salmon; several ways are open to the sensitive.”
“I am very foolish, I dare say.”
“There is some folly that is nearer heaven than some wisdom, my child. If this folly is incapable of reasoning defense, it is still not one to be ashamed of. We may over-cultivate our sensibilities so as, at last, to become Brahminical in our abhorrence of any destruction of life. The argument as to need for animal flesh is hardly a help. Men, in fact, nations, live without it; and it is quite possible that we have in time more or less manufactured both the appetite and the need for this diet. Our nearest anatomical kinsmen, the monkeys, are all vegetarians, and as for any necessity to kill salmon or deer, there is nowadays none. Both are mere luxuries of the rich. Not a soul on these rivers ever gets a salmon, unless he poaches or we give it to him.”
“Isn’t that hard?”
“Yes and no. Throw it all open, and in five years there would be no salmon. They would go as the buffalo have gone.”
“And still I am sorry for the people who cannot fish; the eating is another matter.”