My Boyhood and Youth 



lously sustained in the air while silently explor- 

 ing a veritable fairyland. 



We always had to work hard, but if we 

 worked still harder we were occasionally allowed 

 a little spell in the long summer evenings about 

 sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or 

 two to sail quietly without fishing-rod or gun 

 when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradu- 

 ally learned something about its inhabitants, 

 pickerel, sunfish, black bass, perch, shiners, 

 pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats, 

 etc. We saw the sunfishes making their nests 

 in little openings in the rushes where the water 

 was only a few feet deep, ploughing up and 

 shoving away the soft gray mud with their 

 noses, like pigs, forming round bowls five or six 

 inches in depth and about two feet in diameter, 

 in which their eggs were deposited. And with 

 what beautiful, unweariable devotion they 

 watched and hovered over them and chased 

 away prowling spawn-eating enemies that ven- 

 tured within a rod or two of the precious nest! 



The pickerel is a savage fish endowed with 

 [ 116 ] 



