There was once a boy who thought that he could choose his birthday present more wisely than could his father and mother. He wanted an "arrow rifle"--a useless affair which has long since gone to the place where toys which are failures go. He was disappointed however. His birthday brought him not an "arrow rifle," but a light, jointed fishing-rod. Now this boy had already done some fishing with a heavy bamboo pole, or with one cut from an alder, jerking the fish out of the water, and swinging them over his head. To be sure the heavy pole made his arms ache, but his new rod, which bent at every touch, seemed to him too slender and flimsy to be of any use whatever. I fear he was not very grateful at first, but he was properly rebuked when his father took a day from professional cares, and opened the lad's eyes to the pleasure of fishing with light tackle. When he had learned to "cast" flies with his elastic, strong rod, without hooking somebody or something not meant to be hooked; when he had seen the beautiful vermilion-spotted trout flash clear of the water, tempted by the flies; and when he had found that he could tire out and land larger fish than he had ever caught before, simply by pitting against their cunning and strength, skill and patience instead of mere brute force,--then there was opened to that boy a new world of sport and healthy recreation. He has never regretted the "arrow rifle"; and he now proposes to tell the boys as well as the girls who read ST. NICHOLAS how to obtain something which is within the reach of both,--the greatest possible pleasure from fishing. If one could take a bird's-eye view of our country at any time in the summer, he would see boys and girls catching all kinds of fish in all kinds of ways; some off the coast in sailboats, tugging at bluefish or mackerel, others profiting by ST. NICHOLAS'S lessons in black-bass fishing, some "skittering" for pickerel in New England lakes, others trolling for pike in the lakes and rivers of the West. But of all the fresh-water game fish there is none more beautiful and graceful or more active than the trout. [Illustration: RAINBOW TROUT.] [Illustration: RANGELEY LAKE TROUT.]