Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion, and, making a fire close to the water’s edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread, and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness. In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seem to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest.
![meaning of fishing in the dark meaning of fishing in the dark](https://www.outdoorcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/138957.jpg)
When, as was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hillside. Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practicing various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Cœnobites. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country’s hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them.Ī huckleberry never reaches Boston they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cowboy or the partridge. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, “to fresh woods and pastures new,” or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The great chefs, Francatelli and Ude, used to aver that there were 100 different ways of rendering sturgeon fit for an emperor and Soyer would boast that he had added two more methods of its culinary preparation to these apparently exhaustive receipts. The flesh of the sturgeon is looked upon with suspicion little short of aversion by some persons, but it, according to the parts submitted to the operations of the cook, may be rendered into the choicest of dishes-one portion simulating the tenderest veal, another that of the sapid succulence of chicken, and a third establishing its reputation to a claim to most of the gastronomic virtues of the flesh of many acceptable fish in combination.