890 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 14, 1896. 
stone wotild. The high-voiced widgeon, the bass of the 
frogs, the heavy quack of the mallard and the lighter one 
of the bluewing, which sounded like an echo, and the 
curious burr! of the bluebill made a concert to be re- 
membered. The pond might have covered three acres, 
and 2,000 ducks, at least, rested on it that night. We 
did not try to shoot any, for we thought we could get 
what we wanted any time. After dark we lighted our 
iBbre, but it did not seem to disturb the ducks, Our talk 
was not heard in the racket they kept up, and we turned 
in on rur bed of leaves. Frank said that several birds or 
flocks flew around our fire in the night, but Henry and I 
slept too soundly to hear them. Such life was new to 
Frank, and he didn't sleep much.. 
A rifle shot awoke me in the morning and there was a 
thundering sound of rising ducks. Henry had killed a 
mallard, and then the problem was to get the bird. The 
shore was soft black mud, deep and treacherous, and al- 
though the duck was not over 30ft, away, and stone dead, 
it was no easy matter to get it. Frank and I advised him 
not to attempt it, but he vowed he'd have that duck "if 
it took a leg." He began to gather driftwood, brush and 
limbs and threw them in to make a bridge, and as he was 
in earnest we helped him. When he thought his bridge 
was long enough, so that from its end he could reach the 
duck with a pole, he started. I whispered to Frank a 
caution not to apeak to him, and we watched. The 
passage was a success; he reached his pole for the duck, 
something rolled and he was floundering in the mud. 
There was only a couple of inches of water where he was, 
and as he struggled he sank to his waist. We could not 
tell how much further he might sink if he struggled. 
I called to him: "Don't move or you may go deeper; 
keep perfectly still and we'll get you out. Is there a grape- 
vine on this island?" 
"Not a vine," said he, cool as a cucumber. "Take your 
time, I won't stir." 
He was over 20ft. from sound footing, and we cut 
a sapling and shoved the end to him and pulled until 
he could hold on no longer. He let go so suddenly that 
we sat down. He had bent forward so that the mud cov- 
ered his breast. Frank began to fear for his brother, but 
I had another plan. I cut a green cottonwood, or perhaps 
it was an aspen, which had a fork at about 25ft., and these 
two limbs were of an inch or more in diameter. These 
limbs I crossed and twisted, making a loop big enough to 
go over Henry's shoulders, and lashed them firmly to- 
gether with strips of bark at several points. With this 
around him and the grip of his hands, together with the 
use of his legs, we pulled him to solid ground, the mud 
being plowed up by his shirt collar so that his clothing 
was filled inside and out. I remained to get breakfast, 
while Frank went with Henry over to the cleaner waters 
of the sloo, where he washed himself and his clothes, 
while Frank returned for breakfast for himself and 
brother. When we reached him his garments were all 
hung in the sun, but he was shivering, for the morning 
was cool. Frank gave him his trousers and sat in his 
drawers, and I loaned a coat. 
After he got some hot coffee and breakfast he said : 
"The hogs gobbled all our fish last night, Frank's big 
pike and all," and we found it to be so. Hogs' tracks 
were numerous in and about our pool and portions of fish 
were scattered about. Frank said: "Well, I'll be durnedl 
That pike would weigh about 40lbs., and was bigger than 
one Bill Patterson shot up in Grant River last fall." 
"Yes," said Henry, "Bill's fish weighed llilbs. on 
Mallet's scales; I saw it weighed, and if yours weighed 
401ba there was a little difference of 28ilb8, ; not much, 
to be sure, but still a difference." 
"Don't you think my fish was as big as Bill's?'" 
"Not quite," said Henry. "I think your pike would 
weigh nearly as much as his if you fed him half a dozen 
pounds of shot when no one was looking." 
Frank appealed to me. I replied: "lam not as good 
a judge of the weights of fish as Henry is, and I didn't 
see Bill Patterson's pike. I am of the opinion, how- 
ever, that if your fish was bigger than Bill's the scales 
would show that it weighed more, but as the hogs have 
eaten it there is nothing left but the memory of it, and 
-you know that we can't weigh memory. Still I remember 
thinking at the time that your fish would go full 201b3, if 
he had been left to grow for a few years." 
"I see," said Frank; "if Henry was as wise as Daniel 
Webster he would know just as much. All rightl We 
are three great sportsmen and have fished one day and 
shot a duck the next morning, and have only our mem- 
ories to show for it. Not a scale nor a feather; 'fhough I 
s'pose Henry will count the duck he shot and the duck 
he had in the mud as two ducks, and both were lost. 
No; I'll be durned if we don't take home that mallard, 
for Henry said he'd get it or lose a leg. How's that, 
Henry, which leg will we take off if you don't get that 
duck?" 
Henry was busy getting into his half -dried clothes and 
said: "Frank, you may have that duck." 
We fished that day and shot ducks with my rifle in the 
evening, slept out next night and took home in the morn- 
ing eight mallards and all the pike and crappies we could 
carry. 
I regret that we cannot print portraits of these boys. I 
have daguerreotypes of them, taken in 1860, sent me by 
their younger brother, Carlos E, Neaville, now living at 
Brodhead, Wis. The photo-engraver says that they can- 
not be reproduced with any effect because of the lack of 
shadows. Henry was about 5ft. 6in., broad-shouldered; 
a long, oval face, with a profuse head of dark hair which 
came down to a point in the middle of his forehead. 
Frank, the younger, was larger. His forehead was 
broader and his ears were lower. What I mean by this 
is that my frequent comment on the picture of a man is: 
"There is much (or little) of his head above his ears." 
Just what ethnological value this has let others say. 
Frank did show evidences of the mercantile instinct, for 
Judge Seaton, now living in Potosi, speaks highly of him 
as an employee of his during the few years that he was a 
merchant. But Henry, he was the companionable fellow, 
no business for him if he could help it. He and I were 
alike in this respect. The woods and the streams were 
good enough for us, and the habits of their denizens were 
of more importance than dollars. What poet has ever 
written in praise of the slave to lucre? There I go again, 
off the track. A dollar is a big thing when you don't own 
one, it's like the boy who said, "Salt makes your potatoes 
taste bad when you don't put any on." 
Once a drunken miner lost his purse in the streets of 
Potosi and Frank found Henry, John Nicholas, 
Frank and I were talking about it with the old postmas- 
ter, Mr. Kaltenbach, when the miner came up asking if 
anyone had found his money. "Yes," said Henry, "we 
found it. How much was there in it?" The man called 
Henry a thief and struck him. About the same instant 
Frank handed the miner one under the left jaw that par- 
alyzed him. We took the man into Jo. Hall's livery 
stable and it took Dr. Gibson over an hour to bring him 
around. Henry scared Frank into thinking he had killed 
a man and Frank went over to Constable Darcy and gave 
himself up. 
As the summer waned and the first chill days of Sep- 
tember approached Frank asked me: "Did you ever eat 
a pawpavp?" 
"No, what is a pawpaw?" 
"They are a fine fruit and grow on a small tree. They 
are shaped like a cucumber and are like custard. There 
is a pawpaw grove down by the river. They'll be ripe 
now in a few days and we'll make up a party and go 
coon hunting, Coons like 'em and you can always start 
one in the pawpaws when they're ripe." 
I had seen the trees when out after wild plums, which 
were plenty in that part of Wisconsin, and were large and 
excellent, but the pawpaws were merely wondered at 
and passed. I think there was a dozen in our party when 
we started for coons on a moonlight night. Except 
Frank and Henry, Charley Guyon, John Clark and Bill 
Patterson, the names are forgotten. Half a dozen dogs, 
some of no particular breed and others that seemed to be 
of all breeds mixed without regard to proportion, went 
along as a necessary part of the outfit. 
I tasted my first pawpaw, but have yet to taste the second 
one. The others ate them with a relish. All I remember 
is that the fruit was shaped something like a banana, but 
shorter; and had the taste of a raw potato ground into a 
paste; its seeds were as large as a lima bean. Of course I 
might learn to like them, but Potosi boys acquired the 
taste in infancy. 
Soon the dogs remarked that a coon had gone off, be- 
cause it did not care to eat pawpaws while such a noisy 
crowd invaded the woods; for in hunting coons the more 
noise the better, as it puts them afoot, while if you are 
still they will equat on a limb at your approach. The 
coon soon treed and hid so that it could not be shot. 
John Clark's axe on one side and Henry Neaville's on the 
other soon dropped the tree and the dogs made a rush. 
We had a fire started to light up the conflict, but couldn't 
see a thing in that tree top but a mass of fighting dogs. 
Cheers and yells from the men encouraged the dogs. 
"Go in, Tige!" "Shake him up. Skip!" "Hang to him, 
Busterl" and such cries cheered on the dogs. "There's 
two of 'em!" yelled John Clark, as two knots of dogs 
were seen, but it turned out that one knot was merely a 
little scrapping of a couple of dogs among themselves, 
perhaps occasioned by one dog's jealousy of the other 
fellow. The coon broke away ana ran up a limb, and a 
rifle ball dropped him. And then such a row ! Every dog 
had hold of him, and a man had hold of every dog's tail, 
and each dog got a kick in the ribs to admonish him that 
a fallen foe should be respected. I thought of the old 
story: "Never strike a man when he is down," said Mul- 
cahy. "Never," replied O'Hooligan; "just sock the boots 
to him." 
The coon was not badly mangled after all this, the dogs 
were chewed up much worse. It reminded me of Corny 
Lannigan, one of my father's ship carpenters, when 
father said to him one morning: "Cornelius, you must 
have had some trouble last night; your eyes are blacked 
and your nose is all plastered over." 
"Yes, Captain," said Corny, "there was a little mis- 
understanding, but you ought to go up to the hospital and 
see the other fellow," and I then remembered reading that 
the great General, Pyrrhus, once said: "Another such a 
victory and I am ruined." 
Another coon was started, and was finally found in a 
tree by the water whose baae had been so washed that it 
leaned out over Grant River. After lighting a fire and 
consulting as to the mode of attack, Frank offered to go 
up the leaning tree and shake the coon off, while the dogs 
were to be held so as to see him drop, and then be loosed 
to tackle him in the water. The plan worked well. The 
coon dropped at the first shake, and so did Frank. The 
dogs rushed in, but no man dared shoot, and after a short 
fight in the water and on the other shore the dogs came 
back and we went home. 
"I tell you," said John Clark, "it takes an almighty 
good dog to whip an old he coon, and not one in a thou- 
sand can do it. Sometimes a little she coon will give a 
dozen such ornery dogs as we've got a good tussle and 
get away," 
"Look a-here, John Clark," said Charley Guyon to his 
brother-in-law, "do you call my dog ornery?"* And so 
we talked on the way home. 
In sketch No. XVI. I told how Frank and Henry went 
out with the Second Wisconsin Infantry, and both were 
killed in Virginia. 
"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the flfel 
To all the sensual world proclaim, 
One crowded hour of glorious life 
Is wortli an age without a name." 
Feed Matheb. 
YE SUNBERRYE FYSHER. 
"Te Sunberrye Fysher" appeared in London Punch about 1875. We 
reprint it from a copy supplied by Mr. Mather, who writes: "He was 
a mighty good fellow, I believe, and I'd rather fish with him than with 
those who sneer at him. He had a mine of pleasure in his outfit 
which is unknown to the man who says: 'I can catch just as many 
trout with an alder pole as the dude can with a $10 pole.' These fel- 
lows always call a fine rod a pole." 
Ye Sunberrye fysher uprose with ye day. 
When ye meadows were sweet with ye smell, 
And ye hedges were white with gossamere veils. 
And ye gardens were livelie with slugs and with snails. 
And ye birds did sing, and ye fyshe did leap. 
And ye river was oilie with too much sleep; 
Till glorious and golden the sun uprlst. 
And gentlie ye cheek of ye water kissed. 
Which, modest and coy from its bed of rushes. 
Sent forth a mist to hide its blushes, 
A cold, gray mist; but it would not do, 
For ye sun kissed ye mist and ye river too; 
And crimson and rosie ye stream flowed on. 
Crimson and rosie ye gray mist shone, 
Bedder and redder, higher and higher, 
As if he had set ye Thames on Are. 
Ye Sunbei-rye fysher to fyshe begins 
For every flsh that has scales and flns; 
Nothing to him is out of its place — 
Perch, eel, barbel, or bream, or dace. 
Big headed chub with crimson tails, 
Red-eyed roach with their silverie scales, 
Ravenous pike of fabulous weight, 
Bleak and gudgeon, and minnow for bait; 
Even a trout he would not despise, 
If onlie a trout would happen to rise- 
About as likelie, truth to declare, 
As to rise a sturgeon in Sunberrye weir. 
Ye Sunberrye fysher has all kinds of hooks. 
In all kinds of boxes, in all kinds of books- 
Limerick, Eendal, Kirby and Hammond- 
All kinds of names by which fyshes are gammoned; 
Broad and narrow, and oval, and round, 
AU sorts of shapes which ever were found. 
Ye Sunberrye fysher has bait, live and dead, 
Pellets of paste and pellets of bread; 
Milk-white gentles, wriggling and fat. 
Worms black and red, with tails spiral and flat. 
Swivels and trimmers, and spinners and gorge. 
Glass minnows, brass minnows, fresh from the forge. 
And spoon bait, of course, which— 1 mean no oflfense— 
Ye fysher provides without any expense. 
Ye Sunberrye fysher ha? flies of all feathers, ■ 
For all sorts of seasons, in all sorts of weathers: 
Flies when ye springtime is blusterie and showerle, 
Flies when ye summer is grassie and bowerie. 
Flies when ye autumn is golden and granie. 
For hot weather, cold weather, mistie or rainie; 
Red-spinner, Palmer, black-peacock and gray, 
Yellow-dun, golden-dun, March-brown, and May, 
Sand-fly and stone-fly, and alder and gnat, 
Black midge and marlow bug— all round his hat. 
Ye Sunberrye fysher has rods not a few. 
Bods with a joint and rods with a screw, 
Short top and stiff top, to spin and to troll, 
Hollow butts, solid butts— rods in ye whole; 
Twisted lines, spun lines, of hair, silk and twine. 
Hair and gut casting lines, tapering and fine; 
Double reels, single reels, quill float and cork. 
Ye Sunberrye fysher is up to his work. 
Ye Sunberrye fysher arose with ye day. 
He fyshed and he fyshed when ye morning was gray; 
He fyshed and he fyshed when ye noontide was frying. 
He fyshed and he fyshed when ye evening was dying; 
He bobbed and he jerked, he spun and he threw, 
He tryed all ye dodges as ever he knew; 
He fyshed till ye dews on ye river did fall— • 
Ye Sunberrye fysher caught nothing at alL 
* "Ornery" is Wisconslnese for "ordinary," but has no such mean- 
ing. It Implies baseness. It is a term of reproach. An "ornery cuss" 
means a low-down fellow, and an "ornery dog" is one of no possible 
account. If a man in New York should describe me as an ordinary 
man, he would hit it right; an every-day sort of man, not distinguished 
for anything in particular; but if a Wisconsin man stigmatizes you as 
"ornery" he means another thing, and if he is not a corn-fed fellow 
you should "let go your left and follow It up with your right." 
Will the correspondent who wrote of the Mather 
Wheelmen kindly send us his address. 
* A Stray Shinplaster* % 
Comes to us once in a while for a copy 
of "Game Laws in « Brief;" but shin- 
plasters nowadays are scarcer than Moose 
in New York; and 25 cents in postage 
stamps will do just as well. ^ 
SMELT FISHING IN BOSTON HARBOR. 
Boston, Oct. 30. — Editor Forest and Stream: Nowa- 
days one meets a good many men with a short cane rod, 
a small basket, a pair of rubber boots and an old suit of 
clothes, and it's long odds that man is going or has been 
smelt fehing somewhere about Boston harbor, and for the 
purposes of that kind of sport all the waters adjacent to 
Dorchester, Quincy, HuU, Hingham and Nantasket come 
under the head of Boston harbor. It is great sport too, 
when smelt are plenty, as has been the case this season, 
and for several weeks the waters named have been thick 
with boats containing all the way from one to four fisher- 
men, A friend told me that one day last week there 
were seventy boats out on the waters of Dorchester Bay 
from Thompson's Island up to the mouth of the Neponset 
River, and that same day that friend and a companion 
caught thirty-one dozen of the dainty little fish. A piece 
of luck came to me the other day in the shape of an invita- 
tion from Com. John N, Roberts to go down to his place 
on Peddick's Island, opposite Hull, and have a try at the 
smelts. I had been there before and knew all the charms 
of the place as well as the lavish hospitality of the owner. 
Mr. Roberts is a sportsman from way back, an ex-com- 
modore of the South Boston Yacht Club, a member of the 
Fish and Game Protective Association, and for many 
years chairman of the committee on the enforce- 
ment of the flsh laws, in which he did excellent 
work, as I know, for I served with him. He was 
the first to obtain evidence and prosecute a party for 
illegally seining smelts, and it was his promptness in fol- 
lowing up that case that put a stop to the practice for sev- 
eral years. 
Formerly the Commodore designated his place "the 
shanty," but now it will have to be called "the cot- 
tage," in consequence of its enlarged and improved ap- 
pearance. A large addition has been put on; the kitchen, 
dining room and chambers are models of neatness, and 
the beds are so comfortable that one is reluctant to leave 
them at the summons of the alarm clock, which was set 
for 4 o'clock the days I was there, as the Commodore is 
always on the fishing grounds with anchors down and 
everything ready for business by the time the sun is seen 
coming up out of the Atlantic in the vicinity of Minot's 
Light, aa it looks to us. But to the fishing. There seemed 
