My Ladders
INDULGENT readers of the Atlantic will recall that not long ago I wrote an account of ‘ My Fishpond.’ I described the beautiful little secluded spot in a woodland hollow in which it lay; I caught, I think, in words something of the autumn glory that fell on it with the falling leaves. I admitted quite frankly that as far as I knew there were no fish in it. But that, I explained, I kept to myself; it made no difference to the expert fishermen, my friends who came on a casual visit to cast a fly at my trout. They were all impressed with the wonderful surroundings, had never seen a trout pond of greater promise, and easily explained, over a friendly drink in my pagoda, the failure of a single day.
I realize now that I never should have published this in the Atlantic. The editor and I must have offended some tutelary god of fishing. Nemesis fell upon me. When the winter broke and the ice went, a great flood of water carried away the dam, and flung it — cement, logs, and all — in a wild confusion of débris down the stream. There it lies now; and above it the pond, drained out flat to a bottom of wet weeds and old logs and stranded puddles — a feeble stream trickling through.
And the trout? Gone! Washed clean away downstream! I take my fishing friends now out to the place and they explain it all to me till I can see it like a vision — the beautiful trout hurled away in spring flood and foam! My friends estimate them as anything from two miles of trout to five miles.
But do you think those fishermen have lost interest? Not a bit! They are more keen on coming out to look at my pond and give advice about it than they were even in the days when we used, as they recall it, to haul out trout by the puntful.
They explain to me what to do. The miller who ran a little feed mill off the pond is going to rebuild the dam, and my friends tell me to put in ladders and the trout will all come back!
A trout, it seems, will climb a ladder! I can hardly believe it, but they all tell me that. In fact, I have learned to say nothing, just to look withal disconsolate till the visiting expert says, ‘Have you thought of ladders?’ And then I act the part of a man rescued from despair. They say it will take about three ladders of five feet each. How a trout climbs a ladder, I don’t know; it must be difficult for it to get hold of the rungs. But a man said that in Scotland he has seen a trout climb twenty feet. It appears that if you go out in the autumn you can lie on the bank of the dam and watch the trout splashing and climbing in the foam. Quite a lot of my friends are coming up here next autumn just to see them climb. And even if it is out of season, they may throw a hook at them!
Fishermen, in other words, are just unbeatable. Cut them off from fish and they are just as happy over ‘ladders.’ So we sit now in my little pagoda, and someone says, ‘Talking about ladders, I must tell you — whoa! Whoa! Not too big a one!’ . . . and away we go, floating off on the Ladders of Imagination.
STEPHEN LEACOCK