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A, may I go fishing?”

That the boy should use the homely “Ma,” rather than “Mamma,” makes it clear that he is not of our generation, although his generous crop of freckles looks familiar, and his blue jumper, coming down to the knees, and that battered straw hat, are sometimes duplicated in our own day. It is fifty years across which we look, even if he does stand out so clearly. The question is one that he asks daily, if not oftener, from the time when the pussy-willows begin to swell in the spring-time, to the season for comforters and woollen mittens in the late fall.

Hark! Do you hear the voice that is calling the boy? It comes distinctly across the long stretch of years, and is as sweet and compelling now as when it pulled at the heart of the lad on that long-ago summer day. It is the voice of the brook. It gurgles and laughs and pleads. It says, “Ha! ha! ha! Isn’t this a beautiful world, and this the finest day ever? Come on, little boy, and play in my ripples. I’ve some nice peppermint growing on my banks, and all sorts of pretty pebbles that I have washed for you. Look sharp, now! Do you see that trout lying at the head of the riffle? Do you know that I counted thirty-seven as big as he is between the bridge and the Deer Pond? Come and catch ’em!”

That brook was a part, and a large one, of the first permanent impressions made upon the boy’s mind. It had its rise in a little pond, concerning which there was the usual dark legend that it had no bottom. Just what held up the water was a mystery, but the boy never doubted the legend. It was fed by numerous springs. Vigorous and noisy from the moment when it broke forth from its source, the brook was ten miles of silvery laughter.

“If you’ll not go out of sight of the house you may go for an hour,” says the mother, for she too has ears to hear the call of the brook and can understand its charm for her lad. “Just up in the pasture-lot above the bridge,” calls back the boy, and starts off with his pole and a supply of angleworms wrapped up in paper. Take special notice of that pole, for it is the joy of the boy’s heart.