CHAPTER XII. 



ROUND LAKE. A QUEER ADVERTISEMENT AND A 

 TROUBLESOME CANINE. 



In looking over the advertising columns of a daily 

 paper some few weeks ago, the following advertisement 

 caught my eye: "The advertiser wishes to meet with 

 a staid, cheerful gentleman of sporting proclivities, one 

 who uses no profanity, tobacco or liquor and is fond 

 of prayer." 



This advertisement seemed to read somewhat un- 

 canny. I could understand a quiet, elderly, old fishing 

 crank of starchy habits preferring for his fishing chum 

 a man who neither drank, swore nor smoked; but why 

 he wished to associate with a person fond of prayer I 

 could not imagine. My curiosity was such that I was 

 obliged to correspond with the writer of the advertise- 

 ment. I wrote him a polite letter stating that although 

 forty years of age I had never yet indulged in any of the 

 reprehensible practices referred to in his advertisement, 

 begging him to communicate his reasons for such a pe- 

 culiar request and explain fully the tenor of the case. 



Two weeks afterward I received the following letter 

 from a gentleman signing himself Rev. Nolly Meekum, 

 and mailed from a little town in Texas: 



"My Dear Mr. Johnson: Your curiosity is very laud- 

 able, and I trust in this case applicable, but I have a 

 brother whom I regret to state must positively take a 

 fishing trip by the doctor's orders, for the benefit of 

 his health, otherwise he will soon die. Now here comes 

 the troublesome part of the whole business. My brother, 

 who used to chew tobacco, now eats it; in place of the 

 former slow process of imbibing liquor from a drink- 

 ing glass, he now employs a funnel; and his profanity 

 is such that the intensity of his expletives often en- 



