THE WHITE PERCH. 4OI 



but when you haul "em in lively on a hand-line you've got 

 time to feel 'em wiggle, and to wonder what you've got." 



This, then, became our fishing law, for John had laid it 

 down, and we wanted to "feel 'em wiggle," whether Chub, 

 Sun-fish, White Perch, Spawn-eater, Bull-head or Eel; for, 

 as before said, we fished on general principles for anything 

 that had an appetite for worms. How our blood stirred 

 when a half-pound Eel made us think we had a monster 

 Perch or perhaps a Bass! Ah me! what fun we all had when 

 boys. "Fun" was the word then; as we get older it becomes 

 "sport." 



The Perch of those days — we will drop distinctive names 

 now — seldom grew above six inches in length in the Hudson, 

 about iA-lbany, and was like burnished silver, a brilliancy that 

 it loses in brackish water, where it breeds and grows to its 

 limit. Then we did not know that learned men would dis- 

 pute about its name, whether it should be Morone or Roccus 

 Ainericamis; and it is possible that our interest would not 

 have been thoroughly aroused to the important fact if we 

 had. We would probably have asked John Atwood about 

 it. John was at least a dozen years old, and if any person 

 knew more about fish than John, we did not know who he 

 was. He could make a bob for Eels, snare Suckers, and 

 could tell whether a nibble was made by a Sun-fish or a 

 Perch; and as for names of fish, bless you! he knew them all. 



In later years the books tell me that this Perch is found in 

 brackish waters along the Atlantic Coast of North America, 

 from Cape Cod to Florida, and I have learned that its com- 

 mon name is shared with a worthless fish which dwells in the 

 Great Lakes, and with some other fishes either inland or on 

 the Pacific Coast; but my song is not of them. 



The White Perch had passed away into the realm of boy- 

 hood recollections by reason of years of wandering inland, 

 where it is unknown, and the fly-rod had displaced the hand- 

 line which John Atwood had taught was the highest form of 

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