Lake Umbagog
1907
August 9
(No 3)
such times that the talk flowed most freely and entertainingly.
Brilliant lawyers, learned college professors, sportsmen of wide field
experience in this and other lands, and fishermen famed for
their skill in casting the trout or salmon fly, all took part
in it by turns. So too did professional guides and native
hunters who mingled freely and on equal terms with the
other guests. It was good to look into the honest rugged
faces and upon the picturesque weather-worn attire, of
these backwoodsmen. If their stories of adventures with 
Moose and Bears seemed at times a trifle overdrawn the
narrators were, as a rule, men who lived too near the heart of
nature and were too mindful of the literal truth, when
speaking seriously to deliberately deceive any one seeking
accurate information regarding the game and
fur-bearing animals which they pursued. But when it came to
a contest at yarn spinning, in the presence of what seemed to them
- as indeed it often was at the Lake House - a worthy and
inspiring audience, they were put, as it were, on their mettle and
somewhat given, I fear, to drawing rather freely on their imaginations.
Most of them wore sober-hued, homespun clothes and broad-
brimmed slouch hats fittingly adorned by a few brilliantly
colored, artificial flies hooked in the band or crown. They
came and went through the forest at all hours and almost as confidently and
quickly by night as by day, usually following
the foot path that led to the Middle Dam, a distance of about
twelve miles. When I watch the sleek, pampered guides, so common at
the present day, rowing listlessly in cushioned boats or lounging
in the wheel houses of swift steamers, I wonder if they, like their 
fathers, ever tramp cheerfully a dozen miles or more by night over a blind
trail, perhaps after a long day's work and in a heavy rain storm,
on no more pressing errand than that of mailing an important