THE next time anyone comes to me and says: "Bill, I 

 know a place where there's speckled trout so thick 

 they'll wear you out taking them off the hook a place 

 where it's cool and where you can sleep at night far from the 

 madding throng," I'm going to make business for the man who 

 owns the glass carriage that usually heads the procession and 

 goes slow. I'm going to demonstrate the process of self-elimi- 

 nation as it can be demonstrated by a man in earnest. 



I had one of those alluring tales whispered in my ear during 

 the season past whispered at a time when the city was hot 

 and the air sticky and humid and everyone was sweltering in 

 the fearful heat. "Pudge" Hobson sang this siren song to me, 

 and "Pudge" and I don't speak now. If I ever get the oppor- 

 tunity, I'll kill him yet. He came into my office that after- 

 noon and talked something like this: 



"Bill, you owe it to yourself and to your family to take a rest. 

 While the wife and the kiddies are down at Atlantic City, let's 

 you and I take a little run up the north shore of Lake Supe- 

 rior. We'll go to Duluth, take a boat out of there, and hit it 

 up the Brule. You know the signs you always see in summer, 

 'It's Cool in Duluth!' Well, that's so, Bill. And furthermore, 

 there's trout in the Brule river, like there ain't anywhere else 

 in the world. 



"Bob Galloway and Hank Orbison have just come back and 

 Hank told me they caught up to the limit the law allowed 

 each day, and caught 'em by ten o'clock in the morning. We'll 

 get a camp outfit and a guide in Duluth and for two weeks we'll 

 just lay round camp and fish and smoke our pipes, and rest 

 and read magazines and come back here feeling like different 

 men. This town's too infernal hot for any man with moral 

 tendencies. Let's go up where there's almost frost at night." 



That's the tale this brute sang into my receptful ear. And 

 I, untutored in the woods, listened. 



"Pudge," I said, "I couldn't catch a fish in a sack, even if it 



