In the good old times, when the requirements of business kept one out in the open air, and each client or patient resided many miles away, and the only communication was by foot or on horseback, one did not need the indispensable rest and recreation of to-day.
But now all is changed, and within a hand’s grasp at our offices we can communicate by the strange wires of the telephone or telegraph with friends miles away, and save ourselves those steps which would no doubt be of great benefit if taken.
In this fast world of ours, where the work of a week is crowded into a day, recreation is a necessity, and nowhere, it seems to me, has it greater recuperative power than in the depths of the forest.
It is not as a plea for the angler that I pen these lines—he asks for neither judge nor jury on his tastes, although they no doubt frequently receive the verdict of both; he is a law unto himself.
“It is a very easy thing to scoff at any art or recreation, a little wit mixed with ill-nature, confidence, and malice will do it, though they are often caught in their own trap.”
It is only a few weeks since that I was rallied on my pet hobby by a prominent business man, who thought one could hardly be in his right mind who had a fondness for life in the woods, and that it must give one a tendency to coarseness, rather than improving our higher and more æsthetic tastes. But this gentleman was welcome to his ideas, for he was then an invalid from a nervous disease, and had spent the prime of his life regaining his health, when possibly an occasional day’s tramp beside a trout stream would have been a matter of economy to both purse and body.
The father of anglers, Isaak Walton, puts this same idea in a still better light, for although born in 1593, he knew how to read the human nature of to-day; he says: “Yes! there are many grave and serious men who pity us anglers, but there are many more grave and serious men whom we anglers condemn and pity.”
