PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 223 



like a flash, all the incidents of the old time came 

 to my mind, and without a moment's hesitation I 

 walked to the old spruce tree where I had then 

 been adjusting my reel, and picked it up on the 

 very spot where it had fallen two years before. 



Here is another instance : More than fifty years 

 ago, when a very little fellow, in company with 

 others, I was lost in the woods. After many miles 

 of weary wandering we came out upon a clearing, 

 half famished. But the only food we could pro- 

 cure with which to appease our hunger was boiled 

 potatoes and salt pickles. They must have been 

 delicious, for to this day I never see a potato and 

 pickle in juxtaposition without being carried back 

 these fifty years, and see directly before me the 

 earth-covered potato-heap from which the "boil- 

 ing " was taken, the begrimmed pork barrel out of 

 whose ponderous depths the pickles were abstracted, 

 and the huge " crane " which swung across the 

 huger chimney within whose ample "jams" the 

 potato-pot was boiled. I have had a penchant for 

 potatoes and pickles ever since. 



Still another : One who, before disease had laid 

 its heavy hand upon him, was wont to accompany 

 me upon all my angling excursions, had the mis- 

 fortune to become the possessor of a counterfeit 

 five-dollar bill. As, poor fellow, his heart was 

 always fuller of kind thoughts and generous pur- 



