A MORNING IN A SCULLING FLOAT 



By Charles B. Morss 



Far where the broad bays extend, 

 Their billows to the horizon end, 

 And where the honking geese and brant 

 Assemble in their chosen haunt. 



— Isaac McLellan. 



OR a week I had been cultivating my leisure and 

 the gun at the island rendezvous of Hermit Joe. 

 More of the former to be sure than aught else, for 

 though we were in the duck country, the golden weather 

 for the time being put a quietus on the sport, for ducks, 

 like men, love to loaf and loiter under the lethargic 

 influence of the Indian summer days of a northern 

 FaU. 



Birds were about us somewhere we knew, but so long 

 as the weather kept above the frost line they were 

 going to stay put, and so our float rested idly in its 

 reedy slip from sun to sun. To the Hermit who had 

 never graduated from the ducking school in which he 

 had been raised, the mysteries of cover shooting were a 

 closed book, but he nevertheless took huge delight in 



