WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 25 



nation, the quiet places, where in his prime and later man- 

 hood, he was wont to go a-fishing. 



And another of OUT guests was cast from the sama mold. 

 He had, for thirty years, without a single intermission, regu- 

 larly visited the North Woods. He knew every foot of that 

 tangled wilderness ; had fished in every accessible brook, 

 river and lako, and had never been known to do aught that 

 did not become an angler and a man. In all my long asso- 

 ciation with him, in town and forest, around the home- 

 hearth and the camp-fire, 1 never but once saw him out of 

 humor. The single exception was when a conceited cockney 

 who had more of the spirit of the vandal than of the 

 gentle angler happened along where we were in camp and 

 challenged him to a day's fishing to "count." Although 

 proverbially hospitable and never more happy than when 

 entertaining casual guests, he made his contempt for his 

 challenger so unmistakable that the fellow was glad to 

 "vamose the ranch" at the earliest possible moment. If all 

 other honorable angleis were equally emphatic in their de- 

 nunciation of this vile habit, our trout streams would not 

 be so soon depleted. 



After all were comfortably seated around the open fire- 

 place, and our venerable guests and all of us were well down 

 to the middle of our first cigar, the oldest and most honored 

 of the circle said : 



"Well, this is comfortable. This crackling wood fire, this 

 fragrant Havana (only it should be a pipe), and these friendly 

 and familiar faces have knocked thirty years of time into 

 oblivion and dropped me down into the cosy precinctr> of a 

 bark shanty at the foot of Big Tupper. Some of you 

 younger gentlemen were then still in your swaddling clothes, 

 but you and you and you [naming three of us] w^re them 

 or thereabouts years before and for many years thereafter. 

 Providence has dealt kindly with all of us. My t>wn cruse 

 has never been without oil, and I never took physic enough 

 to nauseate a cat. In the beautifully expressive language 

 of Scripture, my 'lines have been cast in pleasant places/ 

 I never had an nilineut a week's fishing wouldn't cure, ano 



