312 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



in all kinds of dining strike me if you will it is now 

 my mature judgment that taking a dinner in the abstract, 

 without any of the poetical surroundings of the chase, 

 and the sentiment which hovers about game killed and 

 cooked by yourself, a grand dinner served by a com- 

 petent chef to gentlemen in evening dress has a charm 

 for me that increases with age. Not that I have lost all 

 taste for an al fresco feast in camp style; but there are 

 pleasures of many kinds, and they are not always com- 

 parable. I only draw the line at those messes called 

 clam chowders, fish chowders and the nightmare provok- 

 ing clambake. These may be classed as coarse feed- 

 ing, but I have had as delicious trout, venison and other 

 game served in camp as ever tickled a tongue. Yet a 

 service in courses, the varied products of the vineyards, 

 the fruits and desserts I like all good things, but the 

 best of all is good company, whether in evening dress or 

 flannel shirt; yet I can't admit that camp cookery excels 

 the best hotel cookery, taking each on its merits outside 

 of sentiment. We deceive ourselves in this; we come 

 in hungry enough to eat a bear before his skin is off, and 

 "hunger is the best of sauce." 



You have often come into camp with a string of trout 

 and had to clean and cook them before you could eat 

 supper. You stuck a stick in the gills with a bit of pork 

 in the mouth, and stood them up before the fire and 

 turned them when necessary. When you thought they 

 were done you sat down, and ate them half raw and half 

 burned, and your hunger prompted you to say that you 

 never ate such trout before in your life. If trout cooked 

 in that same way were set before you in a restaurant you 

 would reject them as unfit to eat. But the memory of a 

 camp dinner with an appetite only six hours old, but very 

 large for its age, has a halo around it that should properly 



