But who has not passed through a like experience, where the odor of a flower, the swing of the arm, a single note of long forgotten music, the curve of a fence, a flash of lightning, the whistle of the winter's wind, a smile, a sigh, a laugh, a word, a tone has brought back scenes, friends, incidents and situations which, but for these fleeting reminders, would have remained buried in the memory until the coming of that more mysterious transition when "all we ever did or said or felt shall, like a marshaled host, pass in full review before the immortal mind."

And now having, during this little bit of irrelevancy, passed over the five miles which intervene between Martin's and the river entrance to Cold and Ray brooks, where I went the last two Augusts, I wish only to say that, in the proper season, they will afford, with moderate skill and patience, such sport as is rarely vouchsafed to any angler anywhere. At least, such was my experience two years ago, when during a short afternoon I landed from a deep pool in Cold brook fifty splendid trout, and fished three hours for one. It was on this wise: For an hour or more before sunset, a trout which I estimated to weigh more than three pounds kept the water in constant agitation and myself in a fever of excitement. I cast for him a hundred times at least. With almost every cast he

would rise, but would not strike. He would come up with a rush, leap his full length out of the water, shake his broad tail at me as if in derision, and retire to repeat his aggravating exploits as often as the fly struck the water. Other trout rose, almost his equal in dimensions, and were taken, but their capture soon ceased to afford me the slightest pleasure. The sun was rapidly declining. We had eight miles to row, and prudence dictated a speedy departure. But I was bound to land that trout "if it took all summer." I tried almost every fly in my book in vain; I simply witnessed the same provoking gyrations at every cast. If, however, I threw him a grasshopper disconnected from my line, he would take it with a gulp; but the moment I affixed one to the hook and cast it ever so gently, up he came and down he went unhooked, with the grasshopper intact. I was puzzled, and as a last resort I sat quietly down hopeless of achieving success so long as light enough remained for the wary fellow to detect the shadow of rod or line. The sun soon set. Twilight gently began its work of obscuration, and in due time just the shadow I desired fell upon the surface of the pool. I then disrobed my leader of its quartette of flies, put on a large miller, and with as much caution as if commissioned to surprise a rebel camp, and with like trepidation, I

chose my position. Then, with a twist of the wrist which experts will comprehend, I dropped my fly as gently as a zephyr just where the monster had made his last tantalizing leap, when, with the ferocity of a mad bull and with a quick dash which fairly startled me in the dim twilight, he rose to my miller, and with another twist of the wrist, as quick and as sudden as his rise, I struck him! I have been present in crowds when grand victories have been suddenly announced, and when my blood has rushed like electric currents through my veins as I joined in the spontaneous shout of the multitude, but I have passed through no moment of more intense exhilaration than when I knew, by the graceful curve of my rod and by the steady tension of my trusty line, that I was master of the situation. He pulled like a Canastoga stallion, and "gave me all I knew" to hold him within the restricted circle of the deep pool, whose edges were lined with roots and stumps and things equivalent. It was an half hour's stirring contest, and the hooting of the owl in the midst of the darkness which enveloped us was the trout's requiem. When I had landed him and had him fairly in quad, will it be deemed silly for me to say that I made the old woods ring with such a shout as one can only give when conscious of having achieved a great victory?

Think not silence the wisdom of fools, but, if rightly timed, the honor of wise men who have not the infirmity but the virtue of taciturnity, and speak not of the abundance, but of the well-weighed thoughts of their hearts. Such silence may be eloquence and speak thy worth above the power of words, Make such a one thy friend, in whom princes may be happy and great counsels successful. Let him have the key of thy heart who hath the lock of his own, which no temptation can open; where thy secrets may lastingly lie, like the lamp of Olybius his urn, alive and light, but close and invisible.— [Sir T. Browne.

At Trout-Hall, not far from this place, where I propose to lodge to-night, there is usually an angler that proves good company. And let me tell you that good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.-[Sir Izaak Walton.

N my frequent journeyings through these pleasant lakes and rivers, with no other companion than my guide, I have learned to understand how really loquacious are silent men of meditative mood. For hours together they make no sign; and but for an occasional smile, which passes like a ripple of sunshine across their composed and peaceful features, they might

be deemed as unconscious and as unsusceptible as the iron row-locks whose monotonous music makes regular record of the march of time. But their silence is only in seeming. They are all the while holding sprightly mental conver sation with absent friends, with favorite authors, with the mountains and forests and lakes which surround them, or are rehearsing some pleasant incident of field or flood to some sympathizing acquaintance, who is as really present, giving attentive audience, as if separated from them by but an arm's length instead of a hundred miles. I have seen such thoughtful wise men startled from their revery, who seemed surprised that they were not surrounded by a bevy of companions. This power of abstraction is a rare and pleasant gift. It differs in itself and in its possessors from absentmindedness, which with me is always associated with glum moroseness, or at least with an absence of joyous geniality. But the jolliest-hearted may, under favoring circumstances, be abstracted, and wake up from his revery without losing a single ray of the pleasant sunshine with which his happy countenance is always illumined. It is not so with the chronically absent-minded, who may be heavybrowed but vinegar-visaged and constitutionally morbid, and who would no sooner think of angling than of robbing the exchequer of the realm.