Meanwhile the other two vaguely divided
orders of gentlemen and sages were sight-seeing, whipping the covert or
the pool with various success for our next day's dinner, or hunting
specimens of all kinds,--_Agassizing_, so to speak.
I cannot praise the Merced to that vulgar, yet extensive, class of
sportsmen with whom fishing means nothing but catching fish,--to that
select minority of _illuminati_ who go trouting for intellectual
culture, because they cannot hear Booth or a _Sonata_ of
Beethoven's,--who write rhapsodies of much fire and many pages on the
divine superiority of the curve of an hyperbola over that of a parabola
in the cast of a fly,--who call three little troutlings "_a splendid
day's sport, me boy_!" because those rash and ill-advised infants have
been deceived by a feather-bug which never would have been of any use to
them, instead of a real worm which would. We, who can make prettier
curves and deceive larger game in a dancing-party at home, did not go to
the Yo-Semite for that kind of sport. When I found that the best bait or
fly caught only half a dozen trout in an afternoon,--and those the dull,
black, California kind, with lined sides, but no spots,--I gave over
bothering the unambitious burghers of the flood with invitations to a
rise in life, and took to the meadows with a butterfly-net.
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