Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things

Name: Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things
Author: Henry Van Dyke

by Henry Van Dyke

Pages: about 170
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 3.1 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 1.7 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Here is the basket; I bring it home to you. There are no great fish in it. But perhaps there may be one or two little ones which will be to your taste. And there are a few shining pebbles from the bed of the brook, and ferns from the cool, green woods, and wild flowers from the places that you remember. I would fain console you, if I could, for the hardship of having married an angler: a man who relapses into his mania with the return of every spring, and never sees a little river without wishing to fish in it. But after all, we have had good times together as we have followed the stream of life towards the sea. And we have passed through the dark days without losing heart, because we were comrades. So let this book tell you one thing that is certain. In all the life of your fisherman the best piece of luck is just YOU.
Has it ever fallen in your way to notice the quality of the greetings that belong to certain occupations?
There is something about these salutations in kind which is singularly taking and grateful to the ear. They are as much better than an ordinary "good day" or a flat "how are you?" as a folk-song of Scotland or the Tyrol is better than the futile love-ditty of the drawing-room. They have a spicy and rememberable flavour. They speak to the imagination and point the way to treasure-trove.
There is a touch of dignity in them, too, for all they are so free and easy--the dignity of independence, the native spirit of one who takes for granted that his mode of living has a right to make its own forms of speech. I admire a man who does not hesitate to salute the world in the dialect of his calling.

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Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things

From the opening

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