‘t was that away.  Father an’ mother was Christian folks, good out-an’-out Calv’nist Baptists from over East’n way.  They fetched me up right, made me go to meetin’ an’ read a chapter every Sunday, an’ say a hymn Sat’day night a’ter washin’; an’ I useter say my prayers mos’ nights.  I wa’n’t a bad boy as boys go.  But nobody thought o’ tellin’ me the one thing, jest the one single thing, that ‘d ha’ made all the diffunce.  I knowed about God, an’ how he made me an’ made the airth, an’ everything an’ once I got thinkin’ about that, an’ I asked my father if God made the fishes.  He said ‘course he did, the sea an’ all that in ’em is; but somehow that did n’t seem to mean nothin’ much to me, an’ I lost my int’rist agin.  An’ I read the Scripter account o’ Jonah an’ the big fish, an’ all that in Job about pullin’ out levi’thing with a hook an’ stickin’ fish spears in his head, an’ some parts in them queer books nigh the end o’ the ole Test’ment about fish-ponds an’ fish-gates an’ fish-pools, an’ how the fishers shall l’ment—­everything I could pick out about fishin’ an’ seen; but it did n’t come home to me; ‘t wa’n’t my kind o’ fishin’ an’ I did n’t seem ter sense it.

“But one day—­it’s more ’n forty year ago now, but I rec’lect it same ’s ‘t was yest’day, an’ I shall rec’lect it forty thousand year from now if I ’m ‘round, an’ I guess I shall be—­I heerd—­suthin’—­diffunt.  I was down in the village one Sunday; it wa’n’t very good fishin’—­the streams was too full; an’ I thought I ’d jest look into the meetin’-house ’s I went by.  ’T was the ole union meetin’-house, down to the corner, ye know, an’ they had n’t got no reg’lar s’pply, an’ ye never knowed what sort ye ’d hear, so ‘t was kind o’ excitin’.

“’T was late, ’most ‘leven o’clock, an’ the sarm’n had begun.  There was a strange man a-preachin’, some one from over to the hotel.  I never heerd his name, I never seed him from that day to this; but I knowed his face.  Queer enough I ‘d seed him a-fishin’.  I never knowed he was a min’ster; he did n’t look like one.  He went about like a real fisherman, with ole clo’es an’ an ole hat with hooks stuck in it, an’ big rubber boots, an’ he fished, reely fished, I mean—­ketched ’em.  I guess ’t was that made me liss’n a leetle sharper ‘n us’al, for I never seed a fishin’ min’ster afore.  Elder Jacks’n, he said ‘t was a sinf’l waste o’ time, an’ ole Parson Loomis, he ‘d an idee it was cruel an’ onmarciful; so I thought I ’d jest see what this man ‘d preach about, an’ I settled down to liss’n to the sarm’n.

“But there wa’n’t no sarm’n; not what I ’d been raised to think was the on’y true kind.  There wa’n’t no heads, no fustlys nor sec’ndlys, nor fin’ly bruthrins, but the first thing I knowed I was hearin’ a story, an’ ‘t was a fishin’ story.  ’T was about Some One—­I had n’t the least idee then who ‘t was, an’ how much it all meant—­Some One that was dreffle fond o’ fishin’ an’ fishermen, Some One that sot everythin’ by the water, an’