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For it must be confessed that Cotton Mather was a confirmed bait-fisherman. Confession is not the word that he would have used with reference to the fact; he would have called it a declaration of principles, and would have maintained that he was a follower of the best, the most skilful, the most productive, the fairest, the truly Apostolic method of fishing.

Jones, on the other hand, was not a little shocked when he discovered in the course of conversation that his colleague, who was in many respects such a good sportsman, was addicted to fishing with bait. For his own angling education had been acquired in a different school,–among the clear streams of England, the open rivers of Scotland, the carefully preserved waters of Long Island. He had been taught that the artificial fly was the proper lure for a true angler to use.

For coarse fish like perch and pike, a bait was permissible. For middle-class fish, like bass, which would only rise to the fly during a brief and uncertain season, a trolling-spoon or an artificial minnow might be allowed. But for fish whose blood, though cold, was noble,–for game fish of undoubted rank like the salmon and the trout, the true angler must use only the lightest possible tackle, the most difficult possible methods, the cleanest and prettiest possible lure,–to wit, the artificial fly. Moreover, he added his opinion that in the long run, taking all sorts of water and weather together, and fishing through the season, a man can take more trout with the fly than with the bait,–that is, of course, if he understands the art of fly-fishing.

You perceive at once that here was a very pretty ground for conflict between the two men, after the ecclesiastical battle had been called off. Their community of zeal as anglers only intensified their radical opposition as to the authoritative and orthodox mode of angling. In the close season, when the practice of their art was forbidden, they discussed its theory with vigour; and many were the wit-combats between these two champions, to which the Samaritans listened in the drug-store-and-post-office that served them in place of a Mermaid Tavern. There was something of Shakspere’s quickness and elegance in Willibert’s methods; but Cotton Mather had the advantage in learning and in weight of argument.

“It is unhistorical,” he said, “to claim that there is only one proper way to catch fish. The facts are against you.”

“But surely, my dear fellow,” replied Willibert, “there is one best way, and that must be the proper way on which all should unite.”

“I don’t admit that,” said the other, “variety counts for something. Besides, it is up to you to prove that fly-fishing is the best way.”

“Well,” answered Willibert, “I fancy that would be easy enough. All the authorities are on my side. Doesn’t every standard writer on angling say that fly-fishing is the perfection of the art?”

“Not at all,” Cotton Mather replied, with some exultation, “Izaak Walton’s book is all about bait-fishing, except two or three pages on the artificial fly, which were composed for him by Thomas Barker, a retired confectioner. But suppose all the books were on your side. There are ten thousand men who love fishing and know about fishing, to one who writes about it. The proof of the angler is the full basket.”

At this Willibert looked disgusted. “You mistake quantity for quality. It’s better to take one fish prettily and fairly than to fill your basket in an inferior way. Would you catch trout with a net?”

Cotton Mather admitted that he would not.

“Well, then, why not carry your discrimination a little farther and reject the coarse bait-hook, and the stiff rod, and the heavy line? Fly-tackle appeals to the aesthetic taste,–the slender, pliant rod with which you land a fish twenty times its weight, the silken line, the gossamer leader, the dainty fly of bright feathers concealing the tiny hook!”