90 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



that traveling by canal is the very poetry of traveling; it is 

 the ideal mode of getting about. This statement is often 

 met with ridicule "it is too slow." My friend, listen: 

 You who say this know little of the pleasure of travel for 

 itself. You wish to annihilate space in a business-like 

 way; you want to go from New York to Chicago, and 

 consult the time-tables for the train which will land you 

 there an hour sooner than another, and you take a 

 "sleeper" that abomination rendered necessary by mer- 

 ciless business! and you go that way even on your wed- 

 ding trip ! Go to ! The mad American train-catching spirit 

 has possessed you, and, like my friend, Col. Raymond, of 

 my last sketch, you "can fish if they bite fast." The pleas- 

 ures of that week on the Erie Canal often arise as I whirl 

 over the route in late years. Little Falls ! There we boys 

 jumped ashore and stole apples and caught the boat at the 

 locks. Weedsport! Here we got off on the "heel-path" 

 side and ran into the outlying edge of Montezuma Swamp 

 and had to swim the canal, when I was the only good 

 swimmer, and, after carrying all the clothes across and 

 safely landing the smallest boy, was forced to lick the 

 older one in the water to keep him from drowning me. 

 His story to his mother conflicted with mine; his black- 

 ened eyes and swollen nose seemed to prove his claim to 

 have been beaten without provocation, but mothers will 

 be mothers, you know, and there was a drop in the social 

 mercury. 



Pardon me; the canal took me off into the swamp, 

 miles away from the Brock-way. I will try to get back 

 to the Brockway boys, as I knew my cousins and sons of 

 cousins away back in Michigan in the long ago. 



Jim was a big boy nearly a man. He could not only 

 smoke a cigar, but could also empty a clay pipe without 

 any visible protest from his stomach. He was big and 



