As I came home through the woods with my string of fish,
trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a
woodchuck stealing ay path, a a strahrill of
savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him
raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he
represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I
found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a
strange abando, seeking some kind of venison which I might
devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The
wildest ses had bee unatably familiar. I found in
myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is
named, spiritual life, as do most men, and aoward a
primitive rank and savage one, and I reverehem both. I love
the wild not less than the good. The wildness and advehat
are in fishing still ree to me. I like sometimes to take
rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps
I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my
closest acquaintah Nature. They early introduce us to and
detain us in sery with which otherwise, at that age, we should
have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and
others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar
sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable
mood for her, iervals of their pursuits, than
philosophers or poets even, roach her with expectation. She
is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the
prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri
and bia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman.
He who is only a traveller learns things at sed-hand and by the
halves, and is poor authority. We are most ied when sce
reports what those men already know practically or instinctively,
for that alone is a true humanity, or at of human experience.
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements,
because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not
play so many games as they do in England, for here the more
primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like
have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England
boy among my poraries shouldered a fowling-piece between the
ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were
not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were
more boundless even than those of a savage. No wohen, that
he did not ofteay to play on the on. But already a ge
is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an
increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest
friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my
fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of
y that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might
jure up against it was all factitious, and ed my
philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for
I had lo differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I
went to the woods. Not that I am less humahan others, but I did
not perceive that my feelings