WINTER ANGLING. 25? 



mantic legend connected with — but stay ! — } t ou already 

 guess it. Big Buck Indian — years ago — in love with 

 mother-in-law — commits suicide — jumps over the 

 ledge — ever since on moonlight nights, water the color 

 of blood (probably tannery just above the Fall), Buck 

 Kill, now corrupted into Buckhill. In the march of 

 civilization the last impedimenta to be left by the way- 

 side are the beautiful superstitions of ignorance. 



" I am now quite alone here. A young music composer, 

 hitherto my companion, left yesterday, so I am hand- 

 cuffed to nature in solitary confinement. 



" By the way, my composer was a voluntary exile from 

 the domestic arena. He had but recently married — to 

 formulate it by proportions — say about a ton of mother- 

 in-law to about an ounce of wife, .and when the contest 

 waxed fiercer than became the endurance of a sensitive 

 nature, he packed his bag and came a-fishing. He was 

 a capital angler — a phenomenal musician and had an 

 appetite and digestion like one or more of the valiant 

 trencher men of England's merrie days, so he solaced 

 his grief with Sonatas and buckwheat cakes in the 

 mornings and tears and ginger-bread in the evenings. 

 He was a born genius and as beautiful as a dream, so I 

 advised him to go home, choke his m-in-1, kiss his 

 wife and live happily all the days of his life. I think 

 he has gone to try the plan. 



" Speaking of buckwheat cakes, you can go out here 

 most any time and catch a nice mess running about a 

 half a pound and game all the way through. No ! No ! 

 17 



