A LEAF FROM A FLY-BOOK. 



Horace Kent Tenney. 



It is a rule of 

 the profession 

 whose members are 

 said by Rosalind to 

 " sleep twixt term 

 and term," that a 

 witness testifying in 

 court may refer to 

 written memoranda 

 for the purpose of 

 " refreshing his rec- 

 ollection." A mem- 

 ory thus assisted is 

 commonly supposed 

 to deliver an accurate state- 

 ment of the facts ; for, in 

 theory, the writing by which 

 the dormant memory is 

 aroused, contains a con- 

 temporaneous and im- 

 partial record of the 

 transaction. 



By analogy to this rule, 

 or perhaps by a relax- 

 ation of it, a sports- 

 man should be al- 

 lowed in relating his 

 experiences, to re- 

 memory from the pages 

 of his fly-book. It contains the journal 

 of his wanderings, and though its 

 entries are rather disjointed, and legible 

 only to the owner, they are surely 

 sufficient to refresh his recollection, 

 which is all the law contemplates. It 

 is true the book cannot be effectually 

 used against him on cross-examination : 

 for its most suggestive entries consist 

 only of scratches, water stains, old-flies 

 — kept as patterns — frayed leaders, and 

 such like trumpery, which would puzzle 

 Scarlet himself to use against a witness. 

 Yet every angler can, from each page of 

 his fly-book; read stories of the lakes 

 and streams, and illustrate them with 

 pictures " from the sweet face of 

 nature." If he can do this, his testi 

 mony is admissible, and I will maintain 

 it in court. 



The credibility of his story, however, 

 is to be tested by the credulity of those 

 who hear it. If they believe it, and try 



fresh his 



to do likewise, so much the better for 

 them, even if they do not succeed. That 

 is exclusively their affair ; for it is an- 

 other rule of the common law that a 

 witness cannot be held responsible for 

 the effect which his testimony may 

 have on the bystanders. 



My fly-book has journeyed with me, 

 lo ! these 13 years. Between its covers 

 I find the following tale, and no one 

 can disprove it from the book. 



The first trip this fly-book made was 

 in the summer of 1882, and it went with 

 a party of four : Colonel B , his son 

 Charles, George C, and the writer. Our 

 objective point after leaving Florence, 

 Wisconsin, was a mining camp on the 

 west shore of Chicagon lake, where the 

 Colonel had some men prospecting for 

 iron ore. It was in July, 1882, and the 

 railroad was being pushed through the 

 woods north-west from Florence. As 

 this was the general direction in which 

 we were headed, it gave us what I at first 

 thought was the advantage of walking 

 about 12 miles on the "right-of-way," 

 — as it was called — a name both tech- 

 nically and practically appropriate. A 

 mile or two of walking, however, showed 

 us that the only advantage which this 

 road possessed lay in the fact that, 

 like the road to destruction, it was so 

 broad and obvious that the wayfarer 

 had no difficulty in keeping in it. Yet 

 it was a toilsome thing to walk on. Re- 

 garded as a piece of engineering it pro- 

 bably had many fine points ; but from 

 the standpoint of the pedestrian — if one 

 has a standpoint while walking — it was 

 simply a long, uneven sand pile, which 

 grew longer and more uneven and more 

 exasperatingly remote from water as the 

 sun journeyed higher. 



We had been told that the trail to 

 Chicagon lake crossed the u right-of- 

 way," about 12 miles from our starting 

 point, and that there was a saloon at the 

 junction of these two thoroughfares. So 

 when we had plodded through the sand 

 for about four hours, we began to look 

 out for the saloon, which, from famil 

 iarity with urban customs, we assumed 



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