Days in the OpenCrandall, Lathan A. (Lathan Augustus)
General
Days in the Open
Crandall, Lathan A. (Lathan Augustus)
Fishing
No wonder that the beauty-loving trout came from far and from near to
this place of assembly. If the truth must be told a majority cared less
about the election than they did for the climate. Search the country
over and you could not find a more charming spot. Just where a great
clump of white birches made a whispering place for the wind, Blue Rock
Brook came gurgling down into the river. Its source was a great spring
back among the hills, and all along its course other springs gave of
their best to keep its waters cool and sweet. From start to finish it
was uncontaminated. When, at last, it found the river, it rested for
a little in a big, clear pool, before giving of its freshness to
the warmer waters of the larger stream. Just here, with clean gravel
underneath and the nodding birches casting their shadows overhead,
enswathed in a delicious coolness that defied the heat of the August
sun, were gathered the clans on the day of which we write. It was here
that they were deceived, betrayed, undone by a stony-hearted Preacher
who had journeyed far to be present at this meeting. But that suggests
backing up and starting over again in order to get the Preacher to this
lonely spot.
How did he find the town-meeting? That is a long story and must be
compressed if told at all. It would take more time than we have at
our command to describe the mighty struggle through which the Preacher
passed in wrenching himself away from the seductive stockyards’ odours
of Chicago. He succeeded, however, and went meandering through New York
State and Massachusetts, finally taking passage on a venerable tub that
crawls--in fair weather--between Boston and Yarmouth. There was a vague
idea haunting the ministerial mind that he wanted to see the Evangeline
country; but that infant persuasion died suddenly in Digby. If any
American tourist wants to see Nova Scotia let him keep away from Digby
or put it last on his list. For fascination it discounts the Lorelei.
All right-minded people (that means those who love to sail and fish) are
charmed with this little town.
If we had not set out to tell how the Preacher broke up that Blue Rock
town-meeting, we should stop right here and relate one or two mild
stories about the fishing at Digby. Did you ever catch pollock that were
run by ninety-horse-power steam engines? Pollock that would strike so
hard that they dislocated the fisherman’s shoulders when he tried to
check them up a bit? Did you ever catch a codfish weighing two hundred
and seventy pounds? Now this is not about pollock or codfish, and it is
just possible that one figure ought to be taken off the weight of that
cod. Do not ask that we tell about the day’s fishing on the Bay of
Fundy, for we must not do it. We “could a tale unfold,” but it shall not
be unfolded here lest we never get to that town-meeting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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