“Your anecdote,” said Smith, “reminds me of one in which I was an actor, and which was impressed upon my mind by a process which few boys are fond of, but which is very apt to make the impression durable. I fished for trout once without line or hook.  I got a fine string of them, and myself into a pretty kettle of fish in the bargain.  On my father’s farm, as it was when I was a boy, was a stream that came down through a gorge in the mountains that bounded the pleasant valley in which that farm lay.  In the spring freshets and the summer rains, that stream was a mighty and resistless torrent, that came roaring and plunging down from the plain above, cascading and leaping down ledges and rushing though a gorge, on either side of which precipices of solid rock stood straight up two hundred feet in height.  It was a goodly sight to see that stream when its back was up, come rushing and foaming, a mighty flood from the deep and shadowy gulf, rolling in its resistless course great boulders of tons upon tons in weight, and eddying, and twisting, and roaring onward in its furious course towards the lake.  In the summer time the drouth lapped up its waters, and it dried away to a little brook, trickling over the falls, and went winding, a small streamlet, around the base of the hill; sometimes it disappeared in the gravel, or among the loose stones, save here and there a pool of narrow limits and shallow depth.  It was a fine trout stream at times.  Its waters were cold and pure, and the brook trout loved to hide away under the great smooth stones or shelving rocks, and be comfortable in the shade, when the summer sun was hot and fiery in the sky.  When the creek was low, they would congregate in the pools and still places, and in times of extreme drouth, might be seen huddled together in such places in great numbers.

“My father, though not a member of any church, was strict in his family discipline in regard to the observance of the Sabbath, the breach of which, on the part of his children, was very apt to be followed by consequences not the most pleasant in the world, for he held that a good switch was an essential article of household furniture, and its occasional use a cardinal principle in the philosophy of family rule.  One Sunday, when I was some ten or eleven years old, when the old people were gone to meeting (and they had to go eight miles to find a meeting house), I, with an older brother, tired of lying around the house, concluded to take a stroll along up the brook.  It was a time of severe drouth, and the stream was dried up, save here and there a small pool, clear and cold, the bottom of which consisted of smooth and clean-washed stones and pebbles.  In one of these was a number of beautiful speckled trout, averaging maybe a quarter of a pound each in weight.  Here was a temptation too strong to be resisted.  We had no hooks or lines with us, and would not have ventured to use them on Sunday, if we had.  That would have