“Oh, no,” the young lady interrupted, “it wasn’t that.  He liked it because he could sit in the hotel and fish from the window.”

Smith the other day went fishing.  He caught nothing, so on his way back home he telephoned to his provision dealer to send a dozen of bass around to his house.

He got home late himself.  His wife said to him on his arrival: 

“Well, what luck?”

“Why, splendid luck, of course,” he replied.  “Didn’t the boy bring that dozen bass I gave him?”

Mrs. Smith started.  Then she smiled.

“Well, yes, I suppose he did,” she said.  “There they are.”

And she showed poor Smith a dozen bottles of Bass’s ale.

“You’ll be a man like one of us some day,” said the patronizing sportsman to a lad who was throwing his line into the same stream.

“Yes, sir,” he answered, “I s’pose I will some day, but I b’lieve I’d rather stay small and ketch a few fish.”

The more worthless a man, the more fish he can catch.

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.—­Izaak
Walton.

FISHING

A man was telling some friends about a proposed fishing trip to a lake in Colorado which he had in contemplation.

“Are there any trout out there?” asked one friend.

“Thousands of ’em,” replied Mr. Wharry.

“Will they bite easily?” asked another friend.

“Will they?” said Mr. Wharry.  “Why they’re absolutely vicious.  A man has to hide behind a tree to bait a hook.”

“I got a bite—­I got a bite!” sang out a tiny girl member of a fishing party.  But when an older brother hurriedly drew in the line there was only a bare hook.  “Where’s the fish?” he asked.  “He unbit and div,” said the child.

The late Justice Brewer was with a party of New York friends on a fishing trip in the Adirondacks, and around the camp fire one evening the talk naturally ran on big fish.  When it came his turn the jurist began, uncertain as to how he was going to come out: 

“We were fishing one time on the Grand Banks for—­er—­for—­”

“Whales,” somebody suggested.

“No,” said the Justice, “we were baiting with whales.”

“Lo, Jim!  Fishin’?”

“Naw; drowning worms.”

We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries:  “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did”; and so (if I might be judge), God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.—­Izaak Walton.

FLATS

“Hello, Tom, old man, got your new flat fitted up yet?”

“Not quite,” answered the friend.  “Say, do you know where I can buy a folding toothbrush?”

She hadn’t told her mother yet of their first quarrel, but she took refuge in a flood of tears.