2 Reminiscences of 



most of my time in trout and pickerel fishing. The 

 former was fairly good, and the latter particularly 

 so over the many ponds in the vicinity, and I trudged 

 many miles for constantly alluring prospects at more 

 promising ponds at a distance, when my results were 

 less than I could have accomplished nearer home. 

 Thus ever is the sportsman beckoned on to distant 

 fields by the ignis fatuus of expectation, and too often 

 misled. 



I remember one day, although I fished for pickerel 

 generally with a skittering bait of frog's legs, of set- 

 ting a quantity of lines off the dam of a mill-pond 

 in the deep water, bai ted with live minnows, and 

 making a great catch. I employed a number of boys 

 who caught bait and attended the lines, using quite 

 a number of winter lines belonging to my uncle. I 

 paid the boys in fish, but had so many, and more than 

 could be eaten at home, that, with the boys, I lugged 

 them two or three miles to a neighboring hotel and sold 

 them for a small handful of silver, which I was not 

 above making pocket-money of, and' thought at the 

 time I was making great headway in finance. This 

 success inspired so much attention toward the pond 

 that it soon became depleted of its precious holding. 



I noted in later years, when visiting the trout brooks 

 I fished that summer with tolerable success, that 

 these brooks had dwindled away in volume and life, 

 owing to the denudation of the forests, a result which 

 is now clearly evident with many New England brooks, 

 and which is shown on a larger scale in many countries 

 and particularly in Spain in the country about Madrid, 

 where are seen large bridges of iron and stone con- 

 structed in the sixteenth century over then large 



