MEN OF MAINE 



on the lower lakes with a party, and we stayed at 

 a hotel of which he was then the proprietor. In 

 the evening one of my friends was looking over 

 the register, and the old man was peering over 

 his shoulder. Suddenly his long bony finger was 

 stretched out and rested on a name on the page 

 before him. " What do ye make that out to be ? " 

 he asked. 



" That, said my friend, " why, that 's very 

 plain. It's 'W. H. Ramsbottom.' " 



" Well, that 's what I thought it were," said the 

 old man, with a relieved expression. " But, do 

 you know, all the time he was here I was afraid 

 to call him it, for fear he 'd think I was sassin' 

 him." 



Sitting around the camp-fire one night, the 

 conversation turned on odd things to eat, and 

 from the common rat, bird's nests, and the musk- 

 rat the extreme appeared to be reached with 

 skunks and snakes as a diet ; but one of the 

 guides was ready for a deeper plunge, and as- 

 serted in rather a sceptical tone, as if he hardly 

 expected to be believed, that he had heard " that 

 there 's places where they eat mushrooms." 



There is n't a kinder-hearted fellow in the 

 region than Frank Philbrick, a good guide, and 



SI 



