III

But one thing troubled Fishin’ Jimmy.

He wanted to be a “fisher of men.”  That was what the Great Teacher had promised he would make the fishermen who left their boats to follow him.  What strange, literal meaning he attached to the terms, we could not tell.  In vain we—­especially the boys, whose young hearts had gone out in warm affection to the old man—­tried to show him that he was, by his efforts to do good and make others better and happier, fulfilling the Lord’s directions.  He could not understand it so.  “I allers try to think,” he said, “that ’t was me in that boat when he come along.  I make b’l’eve that it was out on Streeter Pond, an’ I was settin’ in the boat, fixin’ my lan’in’ net, when I see him on the shore.  I think mebbe I ’m that James—­for that’s my given name, ye know, though they allers call me Jimmy—­an’ then I hear him callin’ me ‘James, James.’  I can hear him jest ’s plain sometimes, when the wind ‘s blowin’ in the trees, an’ I jest ache to up an’ foller him.  But says he, ’I ’ll make ye a fisher o’ men,’ an’ he aint done it.  I ‘m waitin’; mebbe he ’ll larn me some day.”

He was fond of all living creatures, merciful to all.  But his love for our dog Dash became a passion, for Dash was an angler.  Who that ever saw him sitting in the boat beside his master, watching with eager eye and whole body trembling with excitement the line as it was cast, the flies as they touched the surface—­who can forget old Dash?  His fierce excitement at rise of trout, the efforts at self-restraint, the disappointment if the prey escaped, the wild exultation if it was captured, how plainly—­he who runs might read—­were shown these emotions in eye, in ear, in tail, in whole quivering body!  What wonder that it all went straight to the fisher’s heart of Jimmy!  “I never knowed afore they could be Christians,” he said, looking, with tears in his soft, keen eyes, at the every-day scene, and with no faintest thought of irreverence.  “I never knowed it, but I’d give a stiffikit o’ membership in the orthodoxest church goin’ to that dog there.”

It is almost needless to say that as years went on Jimmy came to know many “fishin’ min’sters;” for there are many of that school who know our mountain country, and seek it yearly.  All these knew and loved the old man.  And there were others who had wandered by that sea of Galilee, and fished in the waters of the Holy Land, and with them Fishin’ Jimmy dearly loved to talk.  But his wonder was never-ending that, in the scheme of evangelizing the world, more use was not made of the “fishin’ side” of the story.  “Haint they ever tried it on them poor heathen?” he would ask earnestly of some clerical angler casting a fly upon the clear water of pond or brook.  “I should think ’t would ‘a’ ben the fust thing they ’d done.  Fishin’ fust, an’ r’liging ‘s sure to foller.  An’ it ’s so easy; fur heath’n