ON A GLASS ROOF 125 



through the ice, he must make his "jacks," or 

 "tilt-ups," and have them so nicely balanced that 

 they will give no sign of the struggles of the live 

 bait, yet rise at the first touch of "Long Face's" 

 jaws. Over all these preparations one will have a 

 good time with himself and his thoughts, whether 

 or not he, at last, gets any result from his pleasant 

 labors. One must have the provident forethought 

 to dig his worms in the fall and store them in his 

 cellar if he intends to go perch-fishing in winter, 

 and to catch his minnows while the brooks are 

 open, and keep and feed them in a water-trough or 

 spring-hole till the winter day that he takes them 

 pickerel-fishing. One needs not to go far for the bait 

 for smelt and herring, for the pork-barrel furnishes 

 that till the first fish of each kind is caught, when 

 an eye or undercut of the tail of the smelt and a 

 bit of the chin of the herring are used to lure their 

 brethren to the upper world, where death and the 

 frying-pan await them. 



I do not know how many times I had promised 

 to take myself a-fishing the next winter and had 

 made some preparation toward fulfilling the prom- 

 ise. More than once I had dug a quart of worms 

 in the latest pleasant, unfrozen days of fall, and 

 put them in a big box of earth in the cellar; but 

 among all the short days of many a long winter 

 the day wherein to go fishing had never come, and 

 in spring the worms, their destiny unfulfilled, were 



