Christian life -- Fiction; Fishers -- Fiction; New Hampshire -- Fiction; Short stories
shad-blow and iron-wood (he called them, respectively, sugarplum
and hard-hack) which he used for the more ambitious rods of maturer
years; the mooseberry, wayfaring-tree, hobble-bush, or triptoe,--it
has all these names, with stout, trailing branches, over which he
stumbled as he hurried through the woods and underbrush in the
darkening twilight.
He had never heard of entomology. Guenee, Hubner, and Fabricius
were unknown names; but he could have told these worthies many new
things. Did they know just at what hour the trout ceased leaping
at dark fly or moth, and could see only in the dim light the
ghostly white miller? Did they know the comparative merits, as a
tempting bait, of grasshopper, cricket, spider, or wasp; and could
they, with bits of wool, tinsel, and feather, copy the real
dipterous, hymenopterous, or orthopterous insect? And the birds:
he knew them as do few ornithologists, by sight, by sound, by
little ways and tricks of their own, known only to themselves and
him. The white-throat sparrow with its sweet, far-reaching chant;
the hermit-thrush with its chime of bells in the calm summer
twilight; the vesper-sparrow that ran before him as he crossed the
meadow, or sang for hours, as he fished the stream, its unvarying,
but scarcely monotonous little strain; the cedar-bird, with its
smooth brown coast of Quaker simplicity, and speech as brief and
simple as Quaker yea or nay; the winter-wren sending out his
strange, lovely, liquid warble from the high, rocky side of Cannon
Mountain; the bluebird of the early spring, so welcome to the
winter-weary dwellers in that land of ice and show, as he
"From the bluer deeps
Lets fall a quick, prophetic strain,"
of summer, of streams freed and flowing again, of waking, darting,
eager fish; the veery, the phoebe, the jay, the vireo,--all these
were friends, familiar, tried and true to Fishin' Jimmy. The cluck
and coo of the cuckoo, the bubbling song of bobolink in buff and
black, the watery trill of the stream-loving swamp-sparrow, the
whispered whistle of the stealthy, darkness-haunting whippoorwill,
the gurgle and gargle of the cow-bunting,--he knew each and all,
better than did Audubon, Nuttall, or Wilson. But he never dreamed
that even the tiniest of his little favorites bore, in the
scientific world, far away from that quiet mountain nest, such
names as Troglodytes hyemalis or Melospiza palustris. He could
tell you, too, of strange, shy creatures rarely seen except by the
early-rising, late-fishing angler, in quiet, lonesome places: the
otter, muskrat, and mink of ponds and lakes,--rival fishers, who
bore off prey sometimes from under his very eyes,--field-mice in
meadow and pasture, blind, burrowing moles, prickly hedge-hogs,
brown hares, and social, curious squirrels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account