1 86 



The American Ans^lcr 



looked for is made — ' The gudgeons are 

 running !' — paterfamilias and his boys 

 prepare the simple tackle and dig the 

 worms, while the good wife fills the 

 ample lunch-basket ; the young folks, 

 boys and girls, pass sleepless nights in 

 anticipation of the coming Saturday, 

 when, released from the discipline of 

 the school -room, they can make a raid 

 on the gudgeons which swarm in in- 

 credible numbers in all the adjacent 

 streams. 



" As I sat in the early morning at my 

 window in that most delightful of all 

 country inns, the "Revere," at the 

 Relay on the B. & O. R. R., and looked 

 with wonder on the crowd of people of 

 every age and condition who descended 

 from the cars laden with rods and 

 creels and corpulent baskets and 

 hampers — prophetic of good cheer — and 

 witnessed the eager rush made for the 

 stream to secure points of vantage, or 

 favorite rocks from which to cast their 

 lines ; noted the absence of vulgar 

 rudeness in the scramble for good 

 places ; but why should there have been 

 rudeness — did they not all belong to 

 the gentle brotherhood ? — I descended 

 to breakfast with the complacent feel- 

 ing that I, too, belonged to that eager, 

 but gentle brotherhood of anglers. 



"With an appetite strengthened by 

 the pure, brisk morning air, I fairly de- 

 voured the crisp and golden gudgeons 

 served ' hot and hot ' on the bountiful 

 board. And here I beg to be excused 

 for a short digression which the edu- 

 cated gourmet will appreciate. 



" The ever-to-be-lamented Brillat 

 Savarin, the greatest of connoisseurs in 

 gastrology, and our own renowned Sam 

 Ward, who seems to have inherited the 

 Savarin mantle, both agree that, simple 

 as it may appear, the process of frying 

 with oil, lard or butter is one of the 

 most delicate within the whole range of 



culinary art. The sacrilegious scul- 

 lions — the curse of our country — who 

 profane a divine art by pretending to 

 be cooks, will serve you up a fish or a 

 potato sodden with indigestible grease ; 

 these wretches are totally ignorant of 

 the philosophy of frying, which consists 

 in simply cooking your fish or vegetable 

 through the medium of lard or oil 

 heated to the maximum which the fire 

 can impart. The universally popular 

 potato-chips, crisp and golden, so dry as 

 not to soil a kid glove, are fried by 

 placing them, not in a pan, but in a 

 wire cage which, with its contents, is 

 dipped into boiling lard and withdrawn 

 as soon as the desired color is attained. 

 The * chef ' of mine host, Leach, of the 

 Revere, is an artist ; he gilds his fish in 

 boiling lard, and like his immortal pre- 

 decessor, Vatel, he would commit sui- 

 cide rather than soak his fish or pota- 

 toes in melted grease, as is the fashion ' 

 with the bog-trotting Biddys who rule 

 our American kitchens. 



" With a young lady companion I 

 strolled along the picturesque banks of 

 the stream and witnessed the fishing, 

 and truly it was a novel spectacle, re- 

 minding one rather of the gay and 

 noisy Corso during a Roman carnival 

 than of an assemblage of silent contem- 

 plative anglers. For a mile on either 

 bank of the stream were groups of men, 

 women and children, pulling up the 

 little silver-sided fish as fast as they 

 could throw in. The silence was per- 

 petually broken by the joyous shouts of 

 some urchin who had made a double 

 capture. Perched on the rocks, as far 

 away from the crowd as they could get. 

 were the old men, the veteran gudgeon- 

 fishers of the Monumental City, who 

 from boyhood to old age had made 

 regular annual pilgrimages to the gud- 

 geon-streams, and thought it a day lost 

 when they captured less than fifty dozen 



