Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1917 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

My friends come back from the babbling brooks and talk of the things they’ve done, with their hooks, till the setting of the sun. poles and reels, and their lines and And each at the. end remarks, “I wish I had good luck today; but the biggest fish, and the finest fish, was the fish that got away.” I have heard that yarn, for a hundred years, and I’ll hear it till I die, and when a fisherman bold appears, I heave me a sob and sigh; for I know full well he will stand and dish the story that’s old and gray, of the biggest fis’h, and the finest fish, and the fish that got away. It’s the freckled boy with the oldtime bait, and the fish-line coarse and stout, who sits him down by the brook to wait for a bite from the monster trout; he gets the bite, and his pole goes “Swish!’’ Eureka and boom-de-ay! fie h#s caught the fish', the world-famous fish, that so often got away!