34 MEN 1 HAVE FISHED WITH. 



I was one an unthinking savage, who would take life 

 without other reason than the pleasure of taking it. Re- 

 member this : You can carry a gun all day without shoot- 

 ing anything except what you consider game; but a boy 

 is bloodthirsty, and his desire to kill is at once intensified 

 when the means are at hand. As a boy I did my share 

 of killing every living thing I saw, whether of use to me 

 or not, and most boys will do the same. Once I wrote: 

 "Don't give a boy a gun until he is ninety years old, and 

 then fit him out and tell him to shoot at every swallow, 

 bat or chipmunk that he may meet." Bless me, how I 

 have preached over that little yellowbird ! 



John could bwild bird cages, and in the spring we 

 would wade through the wet grass of the meadows to trap 

 bobolinks, which we sold. He was most successful in 

 rearing robins, thrushes and other young birds taken 

 from the nest, while most boys lost theirs. Later we used 

 to shoot wild pigeons in the spring and fall flights, and 

 with our old musket would bring back from a dozen to a 

 hundred birds in a day, with an occasional snipe, squirrel 

 or rabbit. In winter we set spring poles and box traps 

 for rabbits, and within four years from our first fishing 

 scrape we knew the whole country within a radius of ten 

 miles from Greenbush on the east side of the river. My 

 father was a stern, strict business man, at that time part 

 owner in, and Albany agent of, the Eckford line of tow- 

 boats, having three steamboats and many barges plying 

 to New York, for then the canal boats came no further 

 east than Albany. Thirty years later, when John Atwood 

 was dead, father told me that he once put John in charge 

 of one of his barges ; but he would not attend to business, 

 and he had to discharge him and then give him a subordi- 

 nate place. "Confound him," said father, "he has no 

 sense of responsibility; he is sober and capable, but would 



