CHAPTER VII. 

 HUNTLEY'S LAKE. SWALLOWING A FISH-HOOK. 



I remember some three years ago fishing Huntley's 

 Lake with Tom McGee. Tom is now somewhere in 

 Canada, whither he went in search of health. He was 

 an individual who liyed under the impression that a 

 portion of his liver was missing, a thin-faced, jaundice- 

 complexioned little fellow, always suffering from some 

 imaginary complaint or another and at the same time 

 hunting for a remedy for that disorder. Every few 

 weeks he would make the appalling discovery that one 

 or another of his internal organs was either hopelessly 

 deranged, missing altogether, or else turned topsy- 

 turvy. When I first knew him he had run the whole 

 gamut of his internal economy, from his gall to his 

 sweetbreads, and was then arriving at the firm con- 

 viction that an accident at birth had deprived him of 

 his proper share of liver. 



The amount of medicine that Tom always traveled 

 with was immense. I have many a time seen him while 

 playing a large fish suddenly recollect himself, lay down 

 his rod, look at his watch and solemnly remark: "Exact 

 time for medicine, Charley," and after deliberately 

 measuring out and swallowing the required quantum 

 resume his rod and pull in his fish. 



On the day referred to, when Tom and I were fishing 

 in Huntley's Lake, nothing was biting but the perch 

 and they were biting furiously. They recalled to my 

 memory the novel punishment our old schoolmaster 

 used to inflict on us when I attended school as a small 

 lad. How the old villain would task his ingenuity in 

 this direction! Latin grammar was a stumbling block 

 which always tripped me up, my conjugation of the 

 verbs being abominable. I would "amo, amas, amat," 



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