94 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



widow, and we rattled home in short time under a full 

 moon. 



Going among people whose whole life, training and 

 mode of thought is different from my own has not been 

 an uncommon thing, but this first experience was new, 

 and at times annoying. I felt as a dime museum freak 

 must feel, if he does feel. Interest in such things as 

 changing autumn foliage, the form of a passing flock of 

 wild geese or the strange appearance of clouds, seemed 

 to my backwoods cousins to be silly; these things had 

 never occurred to them as worthy of thought because 

 they were every-day affairs, and to-day I know that a boy 

 who has to turn out at five o'clock in the morning, milk 

 the cows, feed the horses and pigs, and get ready to hoe 

 corn after breakfast has no eye for the beauty of a sunrise 

 any more than he has for a glorious sunset after a hard 

 day's ploughing, when the horses have to be cared for, 

 and all those things which a farmer calls "chores" not 

 work, by any means have to be done before he eats his 

 supper and crawls to bed, only to be awakened before 

 nature tells him that he has slept enough. Yes, to-day 

 it is plain why the city boy was a "freak." He had no 

 "chores" to do at home. He could breakfast at eight, go 

 to school at nine, and after four o'clock he had leisure to 

 observe the change of foliage, the flight of wild geese and 

 the colors of the sky at sunset. On Saturdays he could 

 shoot and fish, and there was a six weeks' vacation when 

 the only things he had to obey were his instincts. 



Lenawee county was marshy in many places. It was 

 the source of water flowing east into Lake Erie, west into 

 Lake Michigan, and south into Ohio. The country was 

 heavily timbered, and the phlebotomizing mosquito was 

 abroad in the land. We boys slept in the barn to avoid 

 them. Boys came from nearby houses for the frolic in 



