74 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



and this is what both of us have had vouchsafed to us for which- 

 devout thanks. But would it have been so but for the rest, recupera 

 tion and repose which have come to us from our annual visits to 

 salmon waters? 



"No politics in mine, if you please, for politics at present form no 

 part of my mental ailment. I simply keep the run of things feel- 

 ing very much as Bret Harte's Abner Dean of 'The Society of the 

 Stanislaus" felt: 



'Then Abner Dean, of Angel's, raised a point of order, when 

 A chunk of old red sandstone struck him in the abdomen, 

 And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, 

 And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more. 1 



' 'As ever and f orever, yours, H. " 



"The lakes referred to in the foregoing note are trout lakes 

 in the vicinity of the salmon river myself and friend an- 

 nually visit. We had heard of them but could find no one 

 who had ever visited all of them. Last summer we re- 

 quested our local servitor to hunt them up and make a map 

 of them. This he has done, and I anticipate as much 

 pleasure in visiting them as I do in fishing our favorite pools 

 for salmon not alone because we are sure to find them 

 full of trout, but because we have found the two or three 

 of the group we have already seen perfect gems of beauty. 

 From my very first visit to the woods I have had a passion 

 to hunt up new places, and make side excursions whenever 

 I could hear of anything worth visiting. To do so often 

 involved hard work, but that fact simply added to the fas- 

 cination of the habit, and, I am inclined to believe, has 

 contributed to the large measure of vigor which has con- 

 tinued with me through all these decades. Now that I have 

 reached my three-score y ears and ten, I may not be able to 

 pass over rough places or climb steep hills as sprightly as in 

 the long ago, but I can do both passably well still, and find 

 no abatement in the delight these adventures and the pleas- 

 ant places they reveal afford me. Indeed, I am not sure 

 that my fondness for them has not even outrun my passion 

 for the excitement derived from the more material incidents 

 connected with angling. Of this, however, I am sure, that 

 every new exploration reveals to me new beauties ; that 

 many pretty bits of scenery that in my former greater 



