Fishermans Luck | Page 3

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[Note: The printing of this book separated contractions such as
"wouldn't" into two parts, "would" and "n't", in dialogue and quotations.
This convention has been preserved. Accent marks in French and other
foreign words have been dropped.]

FISHERMAN'S LUCK AND SOME OTHER UNCERTAIN THINGS
by Henry van Dyke

"Now I conclude that not only in Physicke, but likewise in sundry more
certaine arts, fortune hath great share in them." M. DE MONTAIGNE:
Divers Events.

DEDICATION TO MY LADY GRAYGOWN
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.

CONTENTS
I. Fisherman's Luck
II. The Thrilling Moment
III. Talkability
IV. A Wild Strawberry
V. Lovers and Landscape
VI. A Fatal Success
VII. Fishing in Books
VIII. A Norwegian Honeymoon
IX. Who Owns the Mountains?
X. A Lazy, Idle Brook
XI. The Open Fire
XII. A Slumber Song

FISHERMAN'S LUCK
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.
How salty and stimulating, for example, is the sailorman's hail of "Ship
ahoy!" It is like a breeze laden with briny odours and a pleasant dash of
spray. The miners in some parts of Germany have a good greeting for
their dusky trade. They cry to one who is going down the shaft, "Gluck
auf!" All the perils of an underground adventure and all the joys of
seeing the sun again are compressed into a word. Even the trivial
salutation which the telephone has lately created and claimed for its
peculiar use--"Hello, hello"-- seems to me to have a kind of fitness and
fascination. It is like a thoroughbred bulldog, ugly enough to be
attractive. There is a lively, concentrated, electric air about it. It makes
courtesy wait upon dispatch, and reminds us that we live in an age
when it is necessary to be wide awake.
I have often wished that every human employment might evolve its
own appropriate greeting. Some of them would be queer, no doubt; but
at least they would be an improvement on the wearisome iteration