

_v 



A WORD WITH THE READER. 



THESE sketches originally appeared in the Forest and 

 Stream. Read between the lines, and at times in them, 

 will be found the wanderings of a boy who had no further 

 object in view than to be in the woods and on the waters, 

 and who had no taste for anything like the harness of 

 civilization. 



During the years of vagabondizing many things oc- 

 curred which at the time seemed to deserve little notice, 

 but subsequently grew into pleasant memories ; and I be- 

 gan to write them up, naturally expecting that my imme- 

 diate relatives and personal friends would read them with 

 some interest. I was surprised and gratified to find how 

 many strangers said pleasant things of them, and to know 

 that there was a demand for them in book form. 



The present volume comprises the twenty-four chap- 

 ters which appeared between July n and Dec. 26, 1896. 

 Other sketches of "Men I Have Fished With" have been 

 printed since, and at this writing, in October, 1897, the 

 series is in progress. 



I have aimed to make a sketch of the boy or man of 

 whom I wrote, so that the reader, gentle or otherwise, 

 would know him, as I thought I did, and I find myself tell- 

 ing how to bob for eels, camp out and sleep in barns, kill 

 deer with wooden plugs, taking my first trout on a worm, 

 hunting turtles with Colonel Raymond in boyhood and 

 reviewing his famous setters in after years, shooting tur- 

 keys, spearing eels through ice, and many other things too 

 numerous to mention, up to the time when I was glad to 

 get back home. 



