92 Reminiscences of 



of coloring, in their best suits, with mottled backs and 

 carmine spangles, tender in their love, and fierce in 

 defending. How beautiful their blending of yellow, 

 scarlet, and orange. How tame and seeming fond of 

 attention. How many hours and days and weeks I 

 have watched them, and for almost half a hundred 

 years have I been among them, and some of them seem 

 like old friends, and I meet them after a year's ab- 

 sence, for I have known some of them for years, large 

 fellows, and recognize them readily in the same place 

 year after year ; and one I had so tame — partially con- 

 fined with others — that feeding from my hands was 

 frequent, and I have taken this one out of the water 

 momentarily with my hands, more than once. But I 

 must not go on with trout, or I will never end. 



I will give you later on, perhaps, more of trout than 

 you will care to read, and I leave the subject reluc- 

 tantly to go on with the ice. The ice first commences 

 to freeze in the nooks and little bays in its delicate in- 

 terlacing threads of crystallizations, where perhaps it 

 holds, protected from the waves, and gradually reaches 

 out into the open, where it is to be broken up many 

 times. The lake, though cold enough to freeze, does 

 not, owing to the water motion. It grows steadily 

 colder, and the water, dashing up on the fringing 

 shore, varnishes the rocks and shrubbery with its 

 crystallizations. 



In a still night the ice wreathes over a large space, 

 to be again disrupted, and again and again, while in 

 the protected coves, it solidifies more and more, giving 

 some skating. Then, after a cold, still night, the 

 morning exhibits a frozen surface, but this is not a 

 final closing, for a good blow breaks it all up again, by 



