LAKE MARIE AND BLUFF LAKE. 67 



their gills, with myself in the picture; but owing to the 

 position in which I stood the fishes looked twice as 

 large as I did. 



I recollect another picture, which the Colonel took 

 with his camera once in Idaho, two years ago. There 

 were three of us in the party the Colonel, Judge Mere- 

 dith and myself. We were on a trout fishing trip on 

 the Snake River. The Colonel never traveled without 

 his camera, for he was a regular kodak fiend and missed 

 no opportunity of getting a snap shot at anything that 

 struck his fancy. 



We were staying at Squire Mattson's house, one of 

 the finest residences in the state. One morning just 

 after breakfast all of us, including the Squire, were 

 lounging and smoking outside the front of the house 

 discussing plans for the day's sport, when a procession 

 hove in sight that made us all wonder what in the world 

 it could be. It consisted of an old, mop-haired granger 

 and his wife a thin, hatchet-faced, sour-visaged female 

 in a bunchy calico gown with seven children, the 

 youngest about three, the eldest apparently nine, with 

 a year's difference in the age of each, coming down the 

 road, ranged symmetrically according to size and look- 

 ing like an animated stairway of seven steps. The 

 party stopped when the family reached us, and the old 

 man, after gazing admiringly around, said to his wife: 



"Mighty purty looking place, ain't it, Mariah?'' 



His wife, who was evidently out of temper, snapped 

 out some ansAver, and addressing the bunch of small 

 fry, told them that if their Pap wasn't such a doggoned 

 lazy ignoramus they could all be living in a better house 

 themselves! 



"Say, Mariah," the old man continued, without taking 

 the least notice of his wife's slanderous speech, 

 "wouldn't yoiir old Pap down East be mighty tickled 

 to see you and me living in a swell place like this? 

 Why, here's one of them picture taker fellows," he 

 went on, as he espied the Colonel's camera standing 



