Stories of men in the woods and on the water: a Canadian guide, a trout stream, a keeper of a lighthouse, a boy and a canoe - and in each one a governing passion that decides everything. Van Dyke was a Princeton professor, a clergyman and Wilson's minister to the Netherlands during the war, and a serious fisherman; these 1901 tales are the American outdoors written by someone who knew the country and did not sentimentalize the men in it.