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.

Sometimes he saw deer, in the early morning or in the dusk of the evening, as they came to drink at the lake shore, and looked at him with big, soft eyes not unlike his own.  Sometimes a shaggy bear trotted across his path and hid himself in the forest, or a sharp-eared fox ran barking through the bushes.  He loved to tell of these things to us who cared to listen, and I still seem to hear his voice saying in hushed tones, after a story of woodland sight or sound:  “Nobody don’t see ’em but fishermen.  Nobody don’t hear ’em but fishermen.”

II

But it was of another kind of knowledge he oftenest spoke, and of which I shall try to tell you, in his own words as nearly as possible.

First let me say that if there should seem to be the faintest tinge of irreverence in aught I write, I tell my story badly.  There was no irreverence in Fishin’ Jimmy.  He possessed a deep and profound veneration for all things spiritual and heavenly; but it was the veneration of a little child, mingled as is that child’s with perfect confidence and utter frankness.  And he used the dialect of the country in which he lived.

“As I was tellin’ ye,” he said, “I allers loved fishin’ an’ knowed ’t was the best thing in the hull airth.  I knowed it larnt ye more about creeters an’ yarbs an’ stuns an’ water than books could tell ye.  I knowed it made folks patienter an’ commonsenser an’ weather-wiser an’ cuter gen’ally; gin ’em more fac’lty than all the school larnin’ in creation.  I knowed it was more fillin’ than vittles, more rousin’ than whisky, more soothin’ than lodlum.  I knowed it cooled ye off when ye was het, an’ het ye when ye was cold.  I knowed all that, o’ course—­any fool knows it.  But—­will ye b’l’eve it?—­I was more ’n twenty-one year old, a man growed, ‘fore I foun’ out why