REUBEN WOOD. 



MY FIRST FISH. 



THIS noted sportsman, who for nearly half a century 

 made his home in Syracuse, N. Y., was well 

 known throughout the State, and it was my good 

 fortune to have him as an instructor in the art of angling 

 in earliest boyhood. We were born in the then small vil- 

 lage of Greenbush (opposite Albany), he in December, 

 1822, and I eleven years later. 



Almost every man who has passed the half-century 

 milestone on life's journey loves to imitate Lot's wife and 

 look over his shoulder, and usually the retrospect is pleas- 

 ant because we do not remember clearly; we conjure up 

 the roses in the pathway, and the small thorns are indis- 

 tinct in the distance; a faint humming of the bees whose 

 honey we stole brings no remembrance of the penalty 

 paid for it ; the wound of the sting is cured by the honey 

 in memory, at least. Poor indeed is the man of fifty who 

 has no wealth of retrospect and who thinks the punish- 

 ment of Lot's wife was fitted to the crime ! It was cruelly 

 unjust, and in compensation at this late day she should be 

 sainted perhaps with the name and title of Saint Salina. 

 Here I pause to ask if there is really any such thing as 

 an occult cerebration which caused my pen to turn to 

 thoughts of Lot's wife while writing an apology for look- 

 ing back at the boyhood of a citizen of Syracuse, N. Y., 

 the great salt-producing city of the State? 



There are men who never could have been boys en- 

 gaged in boyish sports and had a boy's thoughts. Every 

 one has known such men. Men who must have been at 



least fifty years old when they were born if that event 



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