The Reward of Virtue by Henry Van Dyke — Read

For several days we lingered on the Lake of the Beautiful River, trying / the fishing. We explored all the favourite meeting-places of the trout, / at the mouths of the streams and in the cool spring-holes, but we did / not have remarkable success. I am bound to say that Patrick was not / at his best that year as a fisherman. He was as ready to work, as / interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked steadiness, persistence, / patience. Some tranquillizing influence seemed to have departed from / him. That placid confidence in the ultimate certainty of catching fish, / which is one of the chief elements of good luck, was wanting. He did not / appear to be able to sit still in the canoe. The mosquitoes troubled / him terribly. He was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take / plenty of the largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry. He even / went so far as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I / did formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose. He / was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous resolve / held firm.

There was one place in particular that required very cautious angling. / It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du Milieu -- an open / space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide, in the midst / of the lily-pads, and surrounded on every side by clear, shallow water. / Here the great trout assembled at certain hours of the day; but it was / not easy to get them. You must come up delicately in the canoe, and make / fast to a stake at the side of the pool, and wait a long time for the / place to get quiet and the fish to recover from their fright and come / out from under the lily-pads. It had been our custom to calm and soothe / this expectant interval with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to / meditation and a foe of "Raw haste, half-sister to delay. " But this year / Patrick could not endure the waiting. After five minutes he would say: