CORPORAL HENRY R. NEAVILLE. 



SIPPI. 



HENRY had the taste for observing the habits of 

 beasts, birds and fishes which leads a man to 

 study them, a taste which may, if not checked, 

 cause him to count the fin-rays of a fish or the scales on 

 the tarsus of a bird, and then inflict his fellow man with 

 a monograph on fin-rays and scales. Henry never 

 reached that stage, but loved the woods and waters just 

 the same, and was a very quiet, companionable fellow of 

 my own age. His father kept the only hotel in Potosi 

 at that time, and Henry and his younger brother Frank 

 were kept by the hotel. Few things troubled Henry; 

 with him it was "always afternoon/' and pleasant visions 

 floated in his mind; yet he was not indifferent to the 

 passage of time if aroused by something which interested 

 him. In still-hunting deer he was tireless, and no 

 amount of fatigue dulled his ardor. If, however, wood 

 was to be cut for the house, Henry somehow never took 

 an absorbing interest in it, and it soon turned out that 

 Henry and I had many traits in common. 



We fished for crappies, another fish new to me, and 

 one which I considered the best pan fish in the Missis- 

 sippi. This is the fish, or brother of the one, called 

 "strawberry bass" in western New York, and if my 

 youthful judgment was correct it is a fish worthy of more 

 attention from fish-culturists than it gets. There is a 

 chance that my more mature palate would confirm the 

 verdict of forty years ago, for I never did care to eat a 



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