FISHIN' JIMMY

BY

ANNIE TRUMBULL SLOSSON

AUTHOR'S EDITION, 1889

FISHIN' JIMMY

It was on the margin of Pond Brook, just back of Uncle Eben's, that
I first saw Fishin' Jimmy.  It was early June, and we were again at
Franconia, that peaceful little village among the northern hills.

The boys, as usual, were tempting the trout with false fly or real
worm, and I was roaming along the bank, seeking spring flowers, and
hunting early butterflies and moths.  Suddenly there was a little
plash in the water at the spot where Ralph was fishing, the slender
tip of his rod bent, I heard a voice cry out, "Strike him, sonny,
strike him!" and an old man came quickly but noiselessly through
the bushes, just as Ralph's line flew up into space, with, alas! no
shining, spotted trout upon the hook.  The new comer was a spare,
wiry man of middle height, with a slight stoop in his shoulders, a
thin brown face, and scanty gray hair.  He carried a fishing-rod,
and had some small trout strung on a forked stick in one hand.  A
simple, homely figure, yet he stands out in memory just as I saw
him then, no more to be forgotten than the granite hills, the
rushing streams, the cascades of that north country I love so well.

We fell into talk at once, Ralph and Waldo rushing eagerly into
questions about the fish, the bait, the best spots in the stream,
advancing their own small theories, and asking advice from their
new friend.  For friend he seemed even in that first hour, as he
began simply, but so wisely, to teach my boys the art he loved.
They are older now, and are no mean anglers, I believe; but they
look back gratefully to those brookside lessons, and acknowledge
gladly their obligations to Fishin' Jimmy.  But it is not of these
practical teachings I would now speak; rather of the lessons of
simple faith, of unwearied patience, of self-denial and cheerful
endurance, which the old man himself seemed to have learned,
strangely enough, from the very sport so often called cruel and
murderous.  Incomprehensible as it may seem, to his simple
intellect the fisherman's art was a whole system of morality, a
guide for every-day life, an education, a gospel.  It was all any
poor mortal man, woman, or child, needed in this world to make him
or her happy, useful, good.

At first we scarcely realized this, and wondered greatly at certain
things he said, and the tone in which he said them.  I remember at
that first meeting I asked him, rather carelessly, "Do you like
fishing?"  He did not reply at first; then he looked at me with
those odd, limpid, green-gray eyes of his which always seemed to
reflect the clear waters of mountain streams, and said very
quietly: "You would n't ask me if I liked my mother--or my wife."
And he always spoke of his pursuit as one speaks of something very
dear, very sacred.  Part of his story I learned from others, but
most of it from himself, bit by bit, as we wandered together day by
day in that lovely hill-country.  As I tell it over again I seem to
hear the rush of mountain streams, the "sound of a going in the
tops of the trees," the sweet, pensive strain of white-throat
sparrow, and the plash of leaping trout; to see the crystal-clear
waters pouring over granite rock, the wonderful purple light upon
the mountains, the flash and glint of darting fish, the tender
green of early summer in the north country.