emotions experienced when, fully mounted, the happy rider "whips" his way through trout-brook and salmon-pool, buoyant in spirit, inhaling new life and vigor with every breath of the pure mountain air which environs him, with his heart pulsating as if every drop of blood was an electric battery, with every nerve thrilled by the rush and swirl preluding the coveted "strike," with the well-poised line, tensioned by the "pull" of a twenty pound salmon, droning out æolian music, and with every nerve and fibre thrumming an accompaniment, embodying more of entrancing melody than ever Strauss or Paganini dreamed of. With such a "hobby," susceptible of exciting such pleasurable emotions, upon which to take an occasional ramble through "the green pastures and beside the still waters" of life, should it be deemed strange that anglers are merry men, contemplative philosophers and enthusiasts in their love of all that is grand and beautiful and sublime in nature?

I am glad to know that the number who ride this harmless "hobby" is constantly increasing. When men through eleven months of weary toil and labor can find pleasure in anticipating the coming of the month "of all the year the best," when they will find inexpressible delectation in admiring the graceful movements of the swaying forest, in reposing beneath its genial shades, in list

ening to the music of bird and brook and mountain torrent, and in casting for speckled trout or silver salmon in pool or rivulet, they will not err who write them down as happier men than their neighbors, and as all the better for this happiness.

There is enough in the minor departments of angling to render it attractive. Sea and lake, as well as brook and river, afford pleasant pastime, but salmon fishing is confessedly the highest round in the ladder, whether because of the great weight, strength and beauty of the fish, the skill required to lure it to the fly, to strike it when lured, or to kill it when struck. No other fish is so shy, so kingly, or so full of game. To kill a thirty or forty pound salmon, is to graduate with all the honors. If but a comparatively few Americans, masters of every other department of the art, have attained unto this coveted dignity, it is from want of opportunity rather than from want of skill. We have no salmon rivers within our territory (where the fish will take the fly) this side the Rocky Mountains. Hence the great mass of our anglers, however skilled and enthusiastic, have deemed themselves to have reached the greatest available elevation in the art when they have killed a four, six, eight or ten pound trout. The single step forward can only be taken by a journey to Oregon or California, or by a trip to the Coast

of Labrador or the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, where the restrictions are such that only a fortunate few are able to gratify their ambitious longings. There are probably not more than a dozen men in the State of New York, outside the city, who have killed a salmon. I can remember but a single person in our immediate neighborhood, beside myself, who has been so fortunate. DEAN SAGE, late of Cohoes, a young gentleman of rare skill with rod and reel and a most enthusiastic angler, had his first fortnight on a salmon river in July. It was a fortnight of exquisite pleasure, the recollection of which will make the present summer ever memorable in his log-book of years. There are, perhaps, a score or two in New York, and as many more scattered from Portland to New Orleans, who know what it is to be electrified by the "rise" of a thirty pound fish. But the number is annually increasing, and a great multitude in the next generation -if salmon breeding is pushed as it should bewill be able to enter into the feelings of grand old Christopher North when he gently caressed his pet salmon-fly on his death-bed.

It is different in the Provinces. There are enthusiastic salmon fishers in every town, from Toronto to Halifax. It was my great pleasure, during my recent visit to St. John, to form the acquaintance of some of the best of them. And I

found them to be just what all true anglers ought to be, and what most true anglers are, large-hearted merry men, kindly natured, robustly gentle, hospitable as dame nature amid whose grandeur and beauty and repose they hold their annual revels. intelligent and obliging, full of enthusiasm, and so open-hearted and open-handed as to captivate and charm all who are made the delighted recipients of their hospitality.

Foremost among this bevy of gentlemen I may mention Chief Justice RITCHIE, no less respected for his virtues than honored for his learning, whose more than three score years, because of his constant walks and wanderings as an angler, have failed to check his elasticity or dampen his enthusiasm. I have pleasant camp memories of this venerable angler- of his genial abandon, of his pleasant jest, of his exhaustless fund of anecdote and incident, of his hearty laugh—a laugh so hearty as to give the world assurance of an honest man, and of that robust health which is the inseparable companion of what an eccentric Scotch philosopher deemed the only requisites of true felicity, viz: "a clear conscience and open bowels" uttering no word which might not be spoken in the home circle, and yet overflowing with mellow hilarity. Happy Province which has such a Chief Justice, and happy Chief Justice who has a con

stituency who do not believe that he either compromises his dignity or soils his ermine by annually "going a-fishing!"

Gen. WARNER, the American Consul, another St. John gentleman, is equally fond of rod and reel. He holds his office as the reward of faithful and intelligent service in field and forum. His appointment was as deserved as it is popular. By the wise and prudent manner in which he administers the duties of his office, he vindicates the sagacity of those who selected him for the position he honors. He is respected alike and equally by all Americans who have occasion to call upon him in his official capacity and by those who have had the good fortune to enjoy the elegant hospitality of his happy home. Although bearing an "empty sleeve❞—the badge of valor and gallant service- he is an expert angler, whose love of the sport made him the lessee of the river we fished, and whose achievements with the rod and reel bear honorable comparison with those of the most accomplished of his compeers.

Mr. NICHOLSON, another member of the honorable guild, took his first lessons in angling in the lakes of Killarney, and no man is now successful in "enticing the wary salmon to his barbed hook." If the records of his wonderful scores sometimes excite a doubt in the mind of the novice, it is a real pleasure to "make no sign,"