WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 33 



you can readily imagine, many changes have occurred in thirty 

 years, and of many who were once our forest companions, 'there 

 only remains to us,' as you have said elsewhere, k the recollection of 

 their pleasant ways and joyous companionship.' It makes me sad 

 to remember how many have passed away with whom I have taken 

 'sweet counsel' in the dear old woods, but whom I will see no more 

 this side the dark river. Yours, very truly, J. R. R." 



With but three days at my certain disposal, Manchester 

 and its adjacent waters seemed the most available. I had 

 heard of the pleasant valley through which clear streams 

 meandered, and I found it all it was claimed to be, "beauti- 

 ful for situation," and a very paradise in itself and in its 

 surroundings. If I had had no other purpose than to fish, I 

 need not have left the valley. I filled my creel as quickly 

 as I desired. The weather was superb, the water was in 

 prime condition, the responses were prompt, and the weight 

 of the fish and their gamey qualities even more inspiriting 

 than their numbers. But I wished to explore as well as to 

 angle ; to fill my lungs with the pure ozone of the mountains, 

 as well as to fill my creel with the speckled denizens of the 

 pearly brooks; to camp out, if but for anight, as well as to fish. 

 I had heard of a tiny lake perched upon the summit of an 

 adjacent mountain many hundreds of feet above the valley, 

 difficult of access, as retired as any peak in the Coloradoes, 

 and well stocked with large trout always available to those 

 who had the skill to catch them. I was prompt to avail my- 

 self of the proffer of an escort thither, and in the early gloam- 

 ing I found myself casting in vain for a rise. At the end of a 

 half hour the full moon came up over the tree tops. As the 

 unclouded rays fell upon the fair bosom of the ruffled 

 waters, I realized something of what Tennyson meant when 

 he wrote of "the shimmering glimpses of a stream." The 

 tiny waves looked like rippling rolls of molten silver, and 

 when the moon had reached an elevation where her beams 

 could flash full upon the face of the forest-bordered lakelet, 

 it made up a picture which has remained with me through 

 all these intervening years. It was for this and such as this, 

 equally as for the delight afforded by the pastime itself, 

 that I had always made my semi-annual visits to the quiet 



