CHAPTER XIX 

 THE ANNALS OF THE PORCH CLUB 



" Verily," said Piscator, " Avalon is surely the home of the 

 gods of the sea. Why, once when I fished for the leaping tuna, 

 a monster sprung from the sea and seized my hook, a huge 

 flapping beast with a nose like a bowsprit of a ship, and with 

 great wings like a dragon. I don't know what it was, whether 

 it was an Ichthyosaurus or " 



" Maybe it was a whale," said the sympathetic listener. 



"A whale, a whale! Why, man, we were using whales for 

 bait !" 



— Ancient California Fish Story. 



HE layman often wonders, perhaps, where all the 

 fish stories originate. They come from the 

 Porch Club, an unorganized organization which 

 holds forth at Santa Catalina Island, where yo.u 

 may see the members any evening, sitting on the club porch, 

 listening, discussing, debating, inventing or retelling stories. 

 Here the tale of Cleopatra's herring is brightened up and 

 told to some tenderfoot, and bank presidents, university 

 professors, divines, chiefs of departments, men of high and 

 low degree, captains of industry, generals, dukes, princes 

 and admirals, sit, and tell what they have done, and provide 

 the whole world with fish stories. All, from princes of the 

 realm, traveling incognito, to plain anglers, appear to be 

 affected by the influence of Ananias or Sapphira (one is as 

 malign as the other), telling stories about their catches and 

 experiences on the fishing grounds with all the semblance of 

 truth; stories which they know, and their listeners know, 

 are impossible ; yet the hearer immediately seizes upon that 

 story, and hies him home, perhaps to some distant land, and 

 tells it as his own. And so fish stories are made, and cir- 



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