THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



13 



The Macn. About Town. 



A GENTLE LUNATIC. 

 If you iu'e natui-ully a tishenuau you ■will 

 luiderstand the followiug little incident 

 and synipathize witli the gentleman who, 

 tlii'oiigh an ungovernable appetite for tish- 

 ing. got into trouble. 



As for myself I look upon the matter 

 fiom the outside. I am free from the ap- 

 petite for catching flsh which has gripped 

 so many men, and on that account feel 

 competent to relate the incident with fair- 

 ness to the fisherman, the policeman and 

 all concerned. 



I have never cared much for fishing. I 

 have never sought to avoid the company 

 of those who flsh, mingling with them 

 freely at all times and endeavoring to 

 show in my manner that in spite of their 

 unnatural appetite I have confidence in 

 them and sympathize with them — for 

 when a man gets this love of fishing in its 

 most violent form he is, to my notion, not 

 responsible for his actions. He is, as I 

 believe, afflicted with a mild and: generally 

 harmless form of insanity. 



There are but few minds that are thor- 

 oughly sane and well balanced on all 

 points. Nearly everybody is a trifle nutty 

 on one subject or another, and I have ob- 

 served that men with au inordinate desire 

 to catch fish are, generally speaking, ap- 

 parently sound and reasonable on all other 

 subjects. Often they are men whom you 

 would not hesitate to tali;e home with you 

 and introduce to your family. 



There are men among them whom I 

 would trust with a million dollars if I had 

 it and whose word in all else is as gootl 

 as any man's bond, but who, when it 

 comes to matters pertaining to flshing, are 

 as weak and unstable as water. I wouldn't 

 believe their fish stories on oath. 



I usetl to consider that this love of pis- 

 catorial pursuits was a pretense, a sub- 

 terfuge to avoid work, but I know now 

 that it is something deeper and darker 

 than that. It grips its victims like the 

 love of strong drink and the more the ap- 

 petite is fed the more insatiable it be- 

 comes. 



The man xvhc) really goes .-i-fishing to 

 avoid work is not a real fisherman. I do 

 that occasionally myself. But the real 

 fisherman will work harder at fishing than 

 anything else you can put him at. I can't 

 account for a man standing in water all 

 day, or rowing about in a boat in the hot 

 sun and l)listering his nose and his neck 

 trying to catch fifty cents" worth of fish, 

 wlK'u he might as well be lying on the 

 bank in the shade, reading or sleeping, on 

 any other grounds than that he is slightly 

 "touched." 



It isn't the value of the fish, you under- 

 stand, for money is no object when the 

 victim sees an oi>portuniry to gratify his 



BY C. D. STRODE. 



hellish apiietite for catching fish. He will 

 spend ^'2o railroad fare and hire a man by 

 the day to row him about to secluded 

 places where he can Indulge himself. It 

 isn't the taste of the tisli when prepared 

 foi' eating, for he can go into a restaurant 

 in Chicago and get more fish than he can 

 c.il, better cooked and better served than 

 he can cook or serve it, for six bits or less. 

 In fact. I don't know what it is except 

 lunacy of a mild type. 



Why. I've seen men whom I know have 

 gone through times of stress, when the 

 Mork of their whole lifetime was at stake, 

 when fortmies were toppling and crashing 

 all about them, without losing their nerve, 

 without turning a hair or even looking 

 worried, go absolutely "daffy" when a lit- 

 tle two-pound fish got away from them. 



I am going into all this explanation be- 

 cause I've got to account for a reputable 

 citizen of Chicago, a man of wealth and 

 position, violating the laws, being arrested 

 and landed in a police station, and can- 

 not find any excuse for him except that he 

 ^\ as not responsible. 



I heard of his escapade in a roimdaboiit 

 way and went to him about it. .\t first lie 

 tried to bhiff his way through, but finally 

 he weakened and told me all. I took ad- 

 vantage of the occasion to attempt to im- 

 press upon him the disgrace his uncon- 

 trolled appetite was bringing upon him 

 and to brace him up to resist it; but, do 

 you know that his mental attitude was 

 such that he seemed only to regret being 

 caught'? Arid already his mind was full 

 of schemes to circumvent the knv and go 

 ahead. 



* * :? 



To begin with, he sought to excuse him- 

 self by explaining that it is his custom to 

 slip away for a week in the early summer 

 ():• late spring to some quiet and secluded 

 spot and indulge his passion for flshing to 

 satiety. He has indulged himself in tills 

 way until this week's flshing is almost ab- 

 solutely necessary to his existence. He 

 stands it all right during the winter, he 

 says, and rarely thinks of fishing, but 

 when the ground gets warm in the spring 

 and llie angle worms crawl up into the 

 sun the yearning becomes almost irresist- 

 ilile. In his office during business hours, 

 at home in the bosom of his family, and 

 even in church while the gospel is being 

 pleached to him, the poor man says he 

 hears voices calling him, and he sees the 

 streams, released from the ice-locked em- 

 lirace of winter, alive with sportive, hun- 

 gry fish, darting hither and thither, even 

 leaping from the water and daring him to 

 combat. 



But this spring circumstances were such 

 that he couldn't get away. We won't go 

 into the details. Let it suttice to say that 



they were strenuous circumstances whicli 

 made his going impossible. And all spring 

 his appetite gnawed at him. 



Rut he might have pulled through only 

 that he lived by a park where there is a. 

 lagoon well stocked with vai'ious kinds' of 

 flsh. It is against the law to fish in the 

 lagoon at this season and the fish seem to 

 know it. In fact, the man told me posi- 

 tively that they do know it and that they 

 act in a way to tantalize and aggravate 

 the helpless fisherman who happens to 

 come near them. 



That is a peculiarity of the peculiar 

 form of mental aberration which affects 

 fishermen — they believe that the fish take 

 a certain personal interest in the matter, 

 the same as the man does; that it is a 

 game of skill, an open contest, the fish try- 

 ing to get the bait off the hook and other- 

 wise tantalize the man without being 

 caught. This is absurd, of course, to a 

 sane man. but all thorough fishermen be- 

 lieve it. 



Anyhow, this man was walking out in 

 the park early one morning when he came 

 upon a little rustic bridge and stood look- 

 ing down into the water. He gives me his 

 word that he hadn't thought of fishing all 

 that morning until he looked down into 

 the water and saw the fish darting around 

 beneath him, and, as he said, acting in an 

 insulting and outrageous manner, frolick- 

 ing about and leaping out of the water, 

 ■when they knew that he was poweriess to 

 defend himself on account of the law 

 against fishing. 



While he was so standing, another man 

 came and stood near and also looked into 

 the water. They stood thus side by side 

 loi- several seconds; then, both looking up 

 at once, they caught each other's gaze. 

 Kach saw the insane glitter in the eyes of 

 the other and each knew the other as a 

 ft How iiKulnian. 



Then the stranger slowly winked his left 

 eye, reached his hand into a capacious 

 <'oal pocket and produced a roll of fishing 

 twine, with hook and lead attached. From 

 another pocket he producetl a small tin can 

 or box with a screwed on top and little 

 air holes punched in the sides. Openhig 

 the can he extracted an angle worm and 

 deftly Ijaiti^l the hook. Then., looking 

 carefully around, he winked slowly again 

 and slyly dropped the hook into the water. 

 Within five minutes he had caught three 

 fair-sized llsh, had stowed them in his 

 pockets and was strolling carelessly away. 

 Then my friend fell. The very next 

 morning he was in the park, equipped as 

 the other man had been, and every morn- 

 ing thereafter until his arrest he was out 

 fishing on the forbidden territory. 



Now it isn't necessary to tell the fisher- 

 men among my readei-s that my friend 



