8 4 



RECREA TION. 



All at once, there comes a new look 

 upon his face. Something has changed 

 his drift of thought ! In a shop win- 

 dow, maybe, or upon a passing woman's 

 neck, is seen something dark brown and 

 sinuous, something with beady black 

 eyes — and the depths of memory have 

 been stirred. He has seen a mink — at 

 least the outline of one — and the sight 

 has transformed this man of the world, 

 this man of the day and events, from 

 what he is, a well-dressed potency of the 

 town, into a sturdy young animal, bare- 

 footed in summer and stoga-booted in 

 winter, one who seeks the mink ! 



He is away from the city just now. 

 hundreds of miles away, and the air is 

 crisp about him and beneath his feet is 

 a soft carpet of newly fallen snow. 

 There is no city world to him. 

 He knows not what the rates of insur- 

 ance are just now, what sort of case he 

 shall next plead, nor what sort of book he 

 shall next write, who shall be the next 

 mayor, as far as he can influence things, 

 nor what is really the best system of 

 future wharfage for the city. He is 

 there on that white carpet looking for 

 the twin pads on the snow. 



He sees, from where he is, the farm 

 house of eighteen sixty-five, may be, of 

 New York, or Pennsylvania, or Michi- 

 gan, or Wisconsin, and he is close be- 

 side where the creek empties into the 

 broader stream. He is imbued again 

 with the boy's hopes and aspirations and 

 experiences the boy's rude reasoning as 

 to means for the attainment of an end. 

 And herein comes the mink. It has 

 been a factor, the mink, in the making 

 of this nation, a factor, by no means in- 

 significant. The mink has assisted in 

 making doctors of law, and United 

 States senators and congressmen galore, 

 and great manufacturers and railroad 

 presidents and other men of note in 

 such fields as Americans have labored 

 in. An animal of importance is this 

 sleek, cruel, beautiful thing of the low- 

 lands and the beech ridges. This 

 slender, almost snake-like, wonderfully 

 knowing, royally coated mink, has been 

 the early leverage in doing things for 

 many a boy of vigor and persistence. 

 And that's about apostrophe enough it 

 appears, decently rounded out into 

 a sounding paragraph or two. But ii 

 isn't buncombe, 'tis true. 



I knew a boy once — a dreaming, am- 



bitious boy, we'll say about thirteen 

 years old, who wanted to go to college, 

 who wanted to do various things, but 

 couldn't, because his father hadn't the 

 money — not much money came to the 

 farmer occupying a rectangle hewed out 

 of Michigan forests in the 6o's — but the 

 boy had good old blood in him, good 

 old fighting blood and a trifle of reason- 

 ing power, and good mink skins in the 

 early 6o's were worth two dollars apiece. 

 So the boy in early winter, warmly clad 

 next to the skin with knit things from 

 his mother's blessed hands, and clad 

 above with linsey-woolsey trousers and 

 a home-made butternut-colored coat, 

 tightly belted with a throat latch, smug- 

 gled from the stable, went forth to seek 

 the mink. Very much knew this boy of 

 the mink and his ways. He knew how 

 the mink and the creek were wedded, so 

 to speak, and he knew the weaknesses 

 and frailties of even this sly, gifted 

 creature of the woods and streams. 

 Well, he caught the mink, half a dozen 

 of him, and ravished him of his glorious 

 covering. He sold those skins, those 

 great luxurious skins for two dollars a 

 piece — and twelve dollars was a tre- 

 mendous sum in the Michigan back- 

 woods in the early 6o's ! With the 

 capturing of those half-dozen minks the 

 winter had ended and spring begun and 

 mink hunting was a thing of the past. 

 But the twelve dollars remained in the 

 proud boy's hands. With the twelve 

 dollars he bought a calf which ranged in 

 the woods and became a cow, which 

 two years later, he sold for thirty dol- 

 lars, which thirty dollars he invested in 

 sheep and which sheep — in the way 

 once popular in newly forced farming 

 regions — he " let out" to double in three 

 years — and from the flock so founded, 

 from the mink, came the money which 

 sent that boy through college and carried 

 him into the city world, and to that life 

 which is quite another thing. I have told 

 about the boy simply because it is a truth- 

 ful story and because it illustrates hon- 

 estly the preliminary paragraphs. 



The ways of the mink, I imagine, are 

 about the same in all this great northern 

 strip of states from New England west 

 to the Pacific. He is the same, strange, 

 beautiful and predatory creature of the 

 creeks and twilight. I will talk now of 

 him only as I have known him in lower 

 Michigan. 



