My Boyhood and Youth 



was dimpled and dotted and streaked here and 

 there where fishes and turtles were poking out 

 their heads and muskrats were sculling them- 

 selves along with their flat tails making glitter- 

 ing tracks. After lingering a while, dreamily 

 recalling the old, hard, half-happy days, and 

 watching my favorite red-headed woodpeckers 

 pursuing moths like regular flycatchers, I 

 swam out through the rushes and up the middle 

 of the lake to the north end and back, gliding 

 slowly, looking about me, enjoying the scenery 

 as I would in a saunter along the shore, and 

 studying the habits of the animals as they were 

 explained and recorded on the smooth glassy 

 water. 



On the way back, when I was within a hun- 

 dred rods or so of the end of my voyage, I 

 noticed a peculiar plashing disturbance that 

 could not, I thought, be made by a jumping 

 fish or any other inhabitant of the lake; for in- 

 stead of low regular out-circling ripples such as 

 are made by the popping up of a head, or like 

 those raised by the quick splash of a leaping 

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