he is a kind of vagrant that nothing fears.  He blends himself with the trees and the shadows.  All his approaches are gentle and indirect.  He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; its impulse bears him along.  At the foot of the waterfall he sits sequestered and hidden in its volume of sound.  The birds know he has no designs upon them, and the animals see that his mind is in the creek.  His enthusiasm anneals him, and makes him pliable to the scenes and influences he moves among.

Then what acquaintance he makes with the stream!  He addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he wooes it and stays with it till he knows its most hidden secrets.  It runs through his thoughts not less than through its banks there; he feels the fret and thrust of every bar and boulder.  Where it deepens, his purpose deepens; where it is shallow, he is indifferent.  He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days.

  [Illustration:  A TROUT STREAM]

I am sure I run no risk of overpraising the charm and attractiveness of a well-fed trout stream, every drop of water in it as bright and pure as if the nymphs had brought it all the way from its source in crystal goblets, and as cool as if it had been hatched beneath a glacier.  When the heated and soiled and jaded refugee from the city first sees one, he feels as if he would like to turn it into his bosom and let it flow through him a few hours, it suggests such healing freshness and newness.  How his roily thoughts would run clear; how the sediment would go downstream!  Could he ever have an impure or an unwholesome wish afterward?  The next best thing he can do is to tramp along its banks and surrender himself to its influence.  If he reads it intently enough, he will, in a measure, be taking it into his mind and heart, and experiencing its salutary ministrations.

Trout streams coursed through every valley my boyhood knew.  I crossed them, and was often lured and detained by them, on my way to and from school.  We bathed in them during the long summer noons, and felt for the trout under their banks.  A holiday was a holiday indeed that brought permission to go fishing over on Rose’s Brook, or up Hardscrabble, or in Meeker’s Hollow; all-day trips, from morning till night, through meadows and pastures and beechen woods, wherever the shy, limpid stream led.  What an appetite it developed! a hunger that was fierce and aboriginal, and that the wild strawberries we plucked as we crossed the hill teased rather than allayed.  When but a few hours could be had, gained perhaps by doing some piece of work about the farm or garden in half the allotted time, the little creek that headed in the paternal domain was handy; when half a day was at one’s disposal, there were the hemlocks, less than a mile distant, with their loitering, meditative, log-impeded stream and their dusky, fragrant depths.  Alert and wide-eyed, one picked his way along, startled