56 HUNTLEY'S LAKE. 



etc., until I fairly got sick of the whole thing and knew 

 less at the end than I did at the commencement. "Old 

 Pepper," as we boys' called our pedagog, would set 

 some offending boy in a corner, after school hours, and 

 selecting some absurd word would compel him to con- 

 jugate it in all its known and unknown moods and 

 tenses. There was an old colored aunty living next 

 door to the schoolhouse who did the cleaning, and one 

 afternoon (owing to some misbehavior on my part) the 

 word masticate was given me by Old Pepper to prac- 

 tice the usual grammarian gymnastics upon. For two 

 mortal hours I declaimed: "I masticate; thou masti- 

 cates; he masticates; she masticates; it masticates;" 

 etc. The old daiiky, coming along, listened outside the 

 schoolhouse window to my edifying ranting for about 

 twenty minutes, and then lifting her hands in wonder- 

 ment, exclaimed loudly: "For de Lawd's sake, wheu- 

 eber will dat der boy hab done eating?" 



It was the same thing with the perch on the occasion 

 of which I am writing. If the old lady had been there 

 I am sure she would have lifted her hands and snid: 

 "For de Lawd's sake, wheneber will dem dere perches 

 hab done feeding?" Never before or since have I seen 

 perch feed so voraciously, they fairly jumped out of 

 the water for our bait. One particularly large perch 

 (it must have weighed quite two pounds, and I have 

 never seen a larger one), which Tom caught, swallowed 

 the hook almost before the bait touched the water. 

 Tom was in a hurry to resume fishing, and in attempt- 

 ing to disgorge the hook the snell broke off short, leav- 

 ing the hook away down in the gullet of the perch. 

 Throwing the fish on one side, Tom remarked: 



"By Jove, Charley, I'll have that all to myself for 

 supper to-night," and went on fishing. 



Two hours of such sport satisfied us, and selecting 

 about a dozen of the largest fishes, we gave the re- 

 mainder to some youngsters who were fishing near, 

 packed up our traps and went home. 



Mrs. Tom cooked our fishes that evening, and, after 



