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.

Fishin'Jimmy's real name was James Whitcher. He was born in the Franconia Valley of northern New Hampshire, and his whole life had been passed there. He had always fished; he could not remember when or how he learned the art. From the days when, a tiny, bare-legged urchin in ragged frock, he had dropped his piece of string with its bent pin at the end into the narrow, shallow brooklet behind his father's house, through early boyhood's season of roaming along Gale River, wading Black Brook, rowing a leaky boat on Streeter or Mink Pond, through youth, through manhood, on and on into old age, his life had apparently been one long day's fishing—an Angler's holiday. Had it been only that? He had not cared for books, or school, and all efforts to tie him down to study were unavailing. But he knew well the books of running brooks. No dry botanical text-book or manual could have taught him all he now knew of plants and flowers and trees.

He did not call the yellow spatterdock Nuphar advena, but he knew its large leaves of rich green, where the black bass or pickerel sheltered themselves from the summer sun, and its yellow balls on stout stems, around which his line so often twined and twisted, or in which the hook caught, not to be jerked out till the long, green, juicy stalk itself, topped with globe of greenish gold, came up from its wet bed. He knew the sedges along the bank with their nodding tassels and stiff lance-like leaves, the feathery grasses, the velvet moss upon the wet stones, the sea-green lichen on boulder or tree-trunk. The re, in that corner of Echo Lake, grew the thickest patch of pipewort, with its small, round, grayish-white, mushroom-shaped tops on long, slender stems. If he had styled it Eriocaulon septangulare, would it have shown a closer knowledge of its habits than did his careful avoidance of its vicinity, his keeping line and flies at a safe distance, as he muttered to himself,"Them pesky butt'ns agin!"He knew by sight the bur-reed of mountain ponds, with its round, prickly balls strung like big beads on the stiff, erect stalks; the little water-lobelia, with tiny purple blossoms, springing from the waters of lake and pond. He knew, too, all the strange, beautiful under-water growth: bladderwort in long, feathery garlands, pellucid water-weed, quillwort in stiff little bunches with sharp-pointed leaves of olive-green,—all so seldom seen save by the angler whose hooks draw up from time to time the wet, lovely tangle. I remember the amusement with which a certain well-known botanist, who had journeyed to the mountains in search of a little plant, found many years ago near Echo Lake, but not since seen, heard me propose to consult Fishin'Jimmy on the subject. But I was wiser than he knew. Jimmy looked at the specimen brought as an Aid to identification. It was dry and flattened, and as unlike a living, growing plant as are generally the specimens from an herbarium. But it showed the awl-shaped leaves, and thread-like stalk with its tiny round seed-vessels, like those of our common shepherd's-purse, and Jimmy knew it at once."The re's a dreffle lot o'that peppergrass out in deep water there, jest where I ketched the big pick'ril,"he said quietly."I seen it nigh a foot high, an'it's juicier and livin'er than them dead sticks in your book."At our request he accompanied the unbelieving botanist and myself to the spot; and there, looking down through the sunlit water, we saw great patches of that rare and long-lost plant of the Cruciferse known to science as Subularia aquatica. For forty years it had hidden itself away, growing and blossoming and casting abroad its tiny seeds in its watery home, unseen, or at least unnoticed, by living soul, save by the keen, soft, limpid eyes of Fishin'Jimmy. And he knew the trees and shrubs so well: the alder and birch from which as a boy he cut his simple, pliant pole; the shad-blow and iron-wood (he called them, respectively, sugarplum and hard-hack) which he used for the more ambitious rods of maturer years; the mooseberry, wayfaring-tree, hobble-bush, or triptoe,—it has all these names, with stout, trailing branches, over which he stumbled as he hurried through the woods and underbrush in the darkening twilight.

He had never heard of entomology. Guenee, Hubner, and Fabricius were unknown names; but he could have told these worthies many new things. Did they know just at what hour the trout ceased leaping at dark fly or moth, and could see only in the dim light the ghostly white miller? Did they know the comparative merits, as a tempting bait, of grasshopper, cricket, spider, or wasp; and could they, with bits of wool, tinsel, and feather, copy the real dipterous, hymenopterous, or orthopterous insect? And the birds: he knew them as do few ornithologists, by sight, by sound, by little ways and tricks of their own, known only to themselves and him. The white-throat sparrow with its sweet, far-reaching chant; the hermit-thrush with its chime of bells in the calm summer twilight; the vesper-sparrow that ran before him as he crossed the meadow, or sang for hours, as he fished the stream, its unvarying, but scarcely monotonous little strain; the cedar-bird, with its smooth brown coast of Quaker simplicity, and speech as brief and simple as Quaker yea or nay; the winter-wren sending out his strange, lovely, liquid warble from the high, rocky side of Cannon Mountain; the bluebird of the early spring, so welcome to the winter-weary dwellers in that land of ice and show, as he

"From the bluer deeps

Lets fall a quick, prophetic strain,"

of summer, of streams freed and flowing again, of waking, darting, eager fish; the veery, the phoebe, the jay, the vireo,—all these were friends, familiar, tried and true to Fishin'Jimmy. The cluck and coo of the cuckoo, the bubbling song of bobolink in buff and black, the watery trill of the stream-loving swamp-sparrow, the whispered whistle of the stealthy, darkness-haunting whippoorwill, the gurgle and gargle of the cow-bunting,—he knew each and all, better than did Audubon, Nuttall, or Wilson. But he never dreamed that even the tiniest of his little favorites bore, in the scientific world, far away from that quiet mountain nest, such names as Troglodytes hyemalis or Melospiza palustris. He could tell you, too, of strange, shy creatures rarely seen except by the early-rising, late-fishing angler, in quiet, lonesome places: the otter, muskrat, and mink of ponds and lakes,—rival fishers, who bore off prey sometimes from under his very eyes,—field-mice in meadow and pasture, blind, burrowing moles, prickly hedge-hogs, brown hares, and social, curious squirrels.

Sometimes he saw deer, in the early morning or in the dusk of the evening, as they came to drink at the lake shore, and looked at him with big, soft eyes not unlike his own. Sometimes a shaggy bear trotted across his path and hid himself in the forest, or a sharp-eared fox ran barking through the bushes. He loved to tell of these things to us who cared to listen, and I still seem to hear his voice saying in hushed tones, after a story of woodland sight or sound:"Nobody don't see'em but fishermen. Nobody don't hear'em but fishermen."

II

But it was of another kind of knowledge he oftenest spoke, and of which I shall try to tell you, in his own words as nearly as possible.

First let me say that if there should seem to be the faintest tinge of irreverence in aught I write, I tell my story badly. The re was no irreverence in Fishin'Jimmy. He possessed a deep and profound veneration for all things spiritual and heavenly; but it was the veneration of a little child, mingled as is that child's with perfect confidence and utter frankness. And he used the dialect of the country in which he lived.

"As I was tellin'ye,"he said,"I allers loved fishin'an'knowed't was the best thing in the hull airth. I knowed it larnt ye more about creeters an'yarbs an'stuns an'water than books could tell ye. I knowed it made folks patienter an'commonsenser an'weather-wiser an'cuter gen'ally; gin'em more fac'lty than all the school larnin'in creation. I knowed it was more fillin'than vittles, more rousin'than whisky, more soothin'than lodlum. I knowed it cooled ye off when ye was het, an'het ye when ye was cold. I knowed all that, o'course—any fool knows it. But—will ye b'l'eve it?—I was more'n twenty-one year old, a man growed,'fore I foun'out why'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. The re 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. The re 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'useter go along by the lakes an'ponds, an'sail on'em, an'talk with the men that was fishin'. An'how the fishermen all liked him,'nd asked his'dvice, an'done jest's he telled'em about the likeliest places to fish; an'how they allers ketched more for mindin'him; an'how when he was a-preachin'he would n't go into a big meetin'-house an'talk to rich folks all slicked up, but he'd jest go out in a fishin'boat, an'ask the men to shove out a mite, an'he'd talk to the folks on shore, the fishin'folks an'their wives an'the boys an'gals playin'on the shore. An'then, best o'everythin', he telled how when he was a-choosin'the men to go about with him an'help him an'larn his ways so's to come a'ter him, he fust o'all picked out the men he'd seen every day fishin', an'mebbe fished with hisself; for he knowed'em an'knowed he could trust'em.

"An'then he telled us about the day when this preacher come along by the lake—a dreffle sightly place, this min'ster said; he'd seed it hisself when he was trav'lin'in them countries—an'come acrost two men he knowed well; they was brothers, an'they was a-fishin'. An'he jest asked'em in his pleasant-spoken, frien'ly way—there wa'n't never sech a drawin', takin', lovin'way with any one afore as this man had, the min'ster said—he jest asked'em to come along with him; an'they lay down their poles an'their lines an'everythin', an'jined him. An'then he come along a spell further, an'he sees two boys out with their ole father, an'they was settin'in a boat an'fixin'up their tackle, an'he asked'em if they'd jine him, too, an'they jest dropped all their things, an'left the ole man with the boat an'the fish an'the bait an'follered the preacher. I don't tell it very good. I've read it an'read it sence that; but I want to make ye see how it sounded to me, how I took it, as the min'ster telled it that summer day in Francony meetin'. Ye see I'd no idee who the story was about, the man put it so plain, in common kind o'talk, without any come-to-passes an'whuffers an'thuffers, an'I never conceited't was a Bible narr'tive.