WAYS AND MEANS 



other had to be led, morning by morning, 

 blind as a puppy, to the cold stream, where 

 patient soaking reduced his swollen eye- 

 lids till he attained a glimmer of vision. 

 A third fought the flies like a demented 

 alcoholic, with ravings and fury incredible 

 in a man of natural meekness, and withal 

 of strong religious conviction. Time is 

 so kindly a deceiver that perhaps all three 

 cherish a happy memory of those far-away 

 days,— might be willing to recover them, 

 if ever the film could be reversed upon the 

 screen; but as it then was turning they 

 heartily wished themselves away from 

 Beelzebub's host. Yet it may be that their 

 torments worked the heroic cure, by 

 inoculation. 



One moist still afternoon, when falling 

 line and breaking fish were obscured by 

 the hovering swaying cloud, I stuck to it 

 with the help neither of oil nor tobacco, 

 for no better than a boy's foolish reason 

 that the trout were rising well. A curi- 

 ous friend made a count of bites at the rate 

 of fifty to the exposed square inch (this by 

 no means exhausted the total), and per- 

 formed some prodigy of figures in arriv- 

 ing at the sum of them. (A dollar a bite 

 would have assured me forever against 

 245 



