Farmington by Clarence Darrow — Read

I was very small when I began to fish,-so small and young that I cannot remember when it was. In fact, my first fishing comes to me now, not as a distant recollection, but only as a vague impression of a far-off world where a little boy once lived and roamed. I am quite sure that I first dropped my line into the little muddy pool just behind our garden fence. I am sure, too, that this line was twisted by my mother's hands from spools of thread, and the hook was nothing but a bended pin. I faintly recall my protests that a real fish-line and hook bought at the store would catch more fish than this homemade tackle that my kind mother twisted out of thread to save the trifling expense; but all my protests went for naught. I was told that the ones she made were just as good as the others, and that I must take them or go without.

All that remains to me of those first fishing-days is the faint impression of a little child sitting on an old log back of the cheese-house, his bare feet just touching the top of the little pool, holding a fish-pole in his hands, and looking in breathless suspense at the point where the line was lost in the muddy stream.