The good brothers compare notes of good places to do
missionary work, where sinners are so thick you can knock them down with a
club, and then they get boats and row to some place on the lake where a
local liar has told them the fish are just sitting around on their
haunches waiting for some one to throw in a hook.
This mixing religion with fishing for black bass and pickerel is a good
thing for religion, and not a bad thing for the fish. Let these Christian
statesmen get "mashed" on the sport of catching fish, and they will have
more charity for the poor man who, after working hard twelve hours a day
for six days, goes out on a lake Sunday and soaks a worm in the
water and appeases the appetite of a few of God's hungry pike, and gets
dinner for himself in the bargain. While arguing that it is wrong to fish
on Sunday, they will be brought right close to the fish, and can see
better than before, that if a poor man is rowing a boat across a lake on
Sunday, and his hook hangs over the stern, with a piece of liver on, and a
fish that nature has made hungry tries to steal his line and pole and
liver, it is a duty he owes to society to take that fish by the gills, put
it in the boat and reason with it, and try to show it that in leaving its
devotions on a Sunday and snapping at a poor man's only hook, it was
setting a bad example.
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