Yielding to Temptation

One Sunday I was walking along the bank of this brook; the water was low. I saw a very large trout in a pool where it remained until the water got too low for it to get out. I thought I could keep it there by raising the bar of sand that hedged it in. But I feared some one else would come along and get it. I could catch it with my hands without a hook. To make sure of my catch I pulled it out and carried it to the house where I was staying, and Monday we had it for dinner. My conscience bothered me; I tried to quiet it by various plausible arguments, but they did not satisfy me. I had broken the Sabbath and that was very wicked, for it is God’s day. It was poor sport to catch a fish that way. I felt more as if I had stolen it, and on the Lord’s day made it worse. I yielded to temptation, I felt mean and ashamed of it. It was my only fishing on a Sunday.

Out on the Sea

Going out on the sea in a boat with the fishermen was full of in- terest, but I had some dread of it. Frequently storms came up quick- ly and often the fishermen would be blown off to sea and be in great danger. Many were drowned.

A fine young man, who lived next farm from where I was work- ing, started for his fish-house on Sunday night so he could get out to his lines early Monday morning; at a lonely place on the road some- thing stopped him. He could not see anything in the road but a smothering feeling seized him whenever he tried to go on; he tried three or four times but could not go any farther. He went back home and early in the morning went to his fishing. He went by the place where he was stopped in the night and did not see or feel anything un- usual; a day or two afterward he was drowned. It seemed as though his strange experience was a premonition of his death.

One summer I went to the shore to help some men with the fish- ing. Two of the men I was helping, had a narrow escape from drown- ing; they were four miles off shore setting out lines. They were throwing a heavy stone—called a kellick—out for an anchor for the ~ lines and they let it fall on the gunwale of the dory which tipped and began to fill; by a quick and frantic effort they pushed the stone out

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