S22 
Comrades. 
When one gets to the last quarter of his journey he 
is apt to look backward more than forward, for the fur- 
ther end of the path, half veiled in the misty glow of sun- 
set, is pleasanter to look upon than the untrodden, un- 
certain path that lies before him. Seen through it the 
wayside woods bloom with rare flowers, the roughness of 
the path is smoothed whereon the companions of oin" 
youth ^va]ked ^-lorificd as in a halo. Where are the forms 
whereof these are but the shadow? Some are still trav- 
eling divergent paths, some asleep in the green tents by 
the waysiile where their journey ended, the green roofs 
dotting the way far back into the filmy perspective. But 
a little way behind, his weary journey ended, sleeps one 
who was always my chosen companion in those happy 
days of youth, when the world was fair around us, the sky 
was blue above, and there was no thought for the mor- 
row but that it would dawn as brightly and be as full 
of sunshine. It is a long lesson to learn that the pres- 
ent is always the l^est, and happy arc we in being such 
slow learners; so. hopeful in our ignorance, when it were 
folly to be wise. We were comrades of rod and gun — 
the same fire of pine roots lighted our nightly fishing; 
when one went shooting the other went also, and all tlvr 
liA'Clong sunny April day we loafed on the level margin 
of the Slang-, potting jiickerel and muskrat, 
T well remember one such day, a Sunday be it whis- 
pered, when all loafers beside us were abroad. How 
warm the sun shone, how soft the April air, breeding laz- 
iness in all things save the pulse of nature. Trcefuls of 
blackbirds dribbled down their medley of harsh and liquid 
notes, the frogs purred in endless monotony, rows of 
little painted turtles basked on every slanted log, wild 
ducks swam safely in the distant midstream, from some 
far sequestered cove came the watery booming of a bit- 
tern, the spawning pickerel swam lazily in the sun- 
.steeped shallows of the marsh, and these we sought with 
eyes intent and stealthy step and guns at ready. With 
like purpose, over again.st us on the Slang's further 
shore stalked the grim old Drum Major, an attache of 
the Champlain Arsenal, where he had borro\yed a heavy 
Colt's revolver, then a novel arm. The Major was fol- 
lowed by his nephew John, a tall, lank youth, very proud 
to be in the company of so distinguished an arms-bearer. 
Whenever they met other fish-hunters the .strange weapon 
Avas certain to attract attention, and then followed exam- 
ination and question, after which Jack would ask, "How 
much did that ere pistil cost. Uncle?" and the Major 
would ans.wer with solemn impressiveness, "Faw-ty dol- 
lars." Then came an awed silence, until another party 
was met, when another inspection was made, and Jack 
would ask, as if for tlie first instead of the twentieth time, 
"Haow much did you say that ere pistil cost. Uncle?" 
"Faw-ty dollars!" Long after they had passed out of our 
sight we heard again and again that solemn response 
echoed along the wooded shore, "Faw-ty dollars!" 
We met One Justin, the old Canadian, with a nose likg 
a Brobdingnagian strawberry and an ancient Queen's arm, 
charged like a cannon. He would empty it at a musk- 
rat, but not for the reward of a single duck. Eighteen 
iblack ducks killed at one discharge of his ordnance was 
his crowning achievement. One Justin had a Httle red 
spaniel that was said to dive after muskrats and often 
catch them. There was a vagabond of a shiftless trapper 
making the round of his traps in a cockleshell skif¥, sing- 
ing tunelessly the song of "Old King Cole," and there 
were fish-hunters in the tottlish log canoes that are now 
extinct. Long ago their navigators made their last voy- 
age to known ports; for them and for me and my com- 
rade there are no more happy days of lazy loafing about 
the Slang. Long ago our ways parted, and since we 
were boys we have never wet line nor pulled trigger to- 
gether, and he has come to the end of it all. 
There were other comrades of field and forest, but 
all are gone, some to the end of their journey; others 
are yet afoot, but far away. Old Jim was my first duck- 
shooting chum. Quaint of speech, of a racy, native hu- 
mor, and always good-natured, he was a right pleasant 
companion, for all his queer notions. He would not use 
paper for wadding because it weakened the force of the 
shot. Tow was his first choice, wasp nest second, and 
if neither was to be had, then linen or cotton rags, of 
which there were always plenty in his household, if not 
always to spare. Sunday was his only holiday, and then, 
when we should have been at our devotions, we prowled 
along the Slang, and coming to the John Clark place 
would ensconce ourselves behind the screen of drooping 
oak boughs and await the incoming of woodduck and 
teal, routed from the creek by other ungodly gunners. 
Far away the booming of a gun would echo along the 
Avooded shores; then our eyes would catch the thin line 
of incoming flocks against the sky; it would grow to 
separate dots and the sibilant beat of swift wings, throb- 
bing but little quicker than our hearts, would become 
audible, and then, with a long downward slant and a 
reaching down of webbed feet, the flock would surge 
into the currentless channel before us. No rest for 
them here, for at the counted word we let drive our 
two charges into the thick of them, and springing to 
flight with tremolous squawks and prodigious splash- 
ing, the harried flock would start again in que*t of 
some safer retreat and we would gather in our victim-. 
Jim's iron-banded and battered relic of 1812 rarely spoke 
but to pronounce death sentence. Good, kindly, old, 
toil-worn, poverty-stricken old Jim. I am sure the re- 
cording angel set down naught against him for these few 
bright days in his weary life. Dearest of all comrades 
was the boy whom I first taught to shoot, whose first 
hook I baited, to whom I imparted my meagre lore of 
woodcraft, and in whose youthful imagination I held a 
place witii Leather Stocking. ' In manhood he became 
my chosen companion, most beloved of all men. brave, 
tender and true. Alike in our tastes and our love of 
nature, it was our daydream of . earthly enjoyment to 
renew our youth beside the old streams in the shadows 
of the old woods, a dream, alaS, never to be realized. 
Cut flown midway in life's journey, he left the world 
)'hp poorer for his loss,' and me alone, stumbling- alonjf 
J 
FORESi AlND stream. 
the dark pathway. Cruder than death, sadder thftn sep- 
aration, is estrangement, that hardens the hearts of oid 
friends against one another. Happy am I that this cold, 
black gulf never yawned between me and my comrades 
of the old days. Sometime, somewhere, in that undis- 
covered country where their kindly spirits abide, shall 
we find a happy hunting ground, where an endless Indian 
summer broods on the celestial hills, v/here, with the 
.shades of guns whose like are made no more, and with 
dogs whose like dwell not now upon the earth, shall wc 
hunt the ghosts of game that has no close time? 
Rowland E. Robinson. 
Old Derry. 
■ "I.eL it be book'd with tlie icst." 
— Shakespeare. 
On a visit to the neighborhood of my early home a 
year or two ago, I ascended the lofty hillside above Eiidge- 
view Park, and from the coign of vantage afforded by an 
abandoned road looking down, I saw at my feet an ex- 
tended landscape. It was mainly old Derry lownsliip, a 
region that I was more or less familiar with in \ny boy- 
hood, but which f liad not visited except to ride through 
it on the line of the railroad for many years. A hun- 
dred recollections, not all of them cheerful, crowded into 
niy memory at the sight. In the distance were the river, 
hills along the Conemaugh, and I could distinguish the 
localities that lay about my native town. To the left and 
several miles distant were two detached peaks or knobs 
that I had not seen for more than two-score years. In 
fact, I think I never saw them but once in my life bef<3re, 
and that was when I was a small boy. I had been with 
my father ;ind some other persons out on the lower slope 
of the Ridge to get fox grapes, and in the evening going 
home \ye passed along a road in sight of those hills, but 
they were far away to the Avest. A heavy rainstorm was 
off in that quarter, and we had a good deal of appre- 
hension that we should be overtaken by it; but it passed 
oflE, and did not cross our path. My father. I remem- 
ber^ called those two hills Camel's Hump and Sugar Loaf. 
I did not know then, and I don't know now, whether 
those were names by which the hills were commonly 
known, or whether, as I rather suspect, wa.s the case, tliey 
were names that he himself applied on the occasion — 
reminiscences of his early home in the Connecticut Valley 
in Massachusetts. Anyhow, I have never heard those 
names since, as the appellations of hills in that section of 
the country. But there they were now, unaltered in ap- 
pearance in the slightest degree. Change and decay and 
death had been widespread; but the everlasting hills were 
unscarred, and lifted up their vast bodies in the blue of 
the horizon as calmly as of yore. 
In the immediate foreground I recognized after a little 
a house at which I had spent some time when a boy of 
fourteen years. What I best remembered in connection 
with tliat place was that one night while I was there, there 
came up what I still think was the most terrific thunder 
storm that I have ever known. It was so alarming that 
everybody in the house got itp, and all gathered in the 
sitting room, and my father, who was a devout man. 
''took the Book" and read a chapter aloud and then led 
the family in prayer amid the uproar. We were all 
thoroughly frightened, and I have never forgotten that 
storm. 
Off to the right I could now recognize another house, 
where a year later I and an elder brother of mine had 
worked for some time. It was late in the fall of the year, 
and my stay there was made memorable to me by reason 
of two things. I lhcre heard for the first time in my life 
the sound of a steam whistle. That would seem almost 
incredible ; yet there were many people then who had 
lived much longer than I had, who had never heard one, 
The Pennsylvania Railroad was at that time in course of 
construction in the western part of the State, and its 
tracks were laid down within a mile or two of the house. 
From my point of observation I could see the railroad just 
at the foot of the slope, where I now sat. and the house 
of? in the distance. Several times in the course of a 
certain A'ery blustery and dreary afternoon there came 
through the woods a most unearthly screeching, which no 
one could account for. We were all agog. The old lady, 
the mother of the household, and a most excellent old 
lady she was, imagined that it was somebody out in the 
woods in the direst extremity. I remember that I re- 
marked to her that it was impossible for anybody to 
"holler" like that; but she replied that if I was in the 
woods Avith a tree-top on me, I didn't know how I would 
holla. That was an imanswerable argument, and we Avere 
all sent ofif into the woods to look for the unfortunate 
victim of a fallen tree. We spent a good part of the 
afternoon in the vain search. That evening at the spelling 
school at "the corners" we learned that the unwonted 
screeching had been the whistle of the construction train 
©n the railroad. It Avas a great relfef to have the mystery 
so happily explained. 
And here, if this were the proper place for it, I siiould 
like to indite somewhat anent the old-time spelling school, 
once so familiar an institution among us, and now so 
rarely heard- of. How clearly at the word comes back 
into memory the grimj' schoolroom, the half-dozen tal- 
low dips smoking in their tin sconces on the unpainted 
wall; the schoolmaster, pompous and precise, spelling 
book in hand ; the two long rows of eager contestants ; 
the few survivors of the struggle as it proceeds from 
"barter" and "garter" through "phthisic" and "bdellium" 
until the suprcm-e eflfort is reached in "honorifticabiditu- 
deanditatibusciue." Great glory Avas. his Avho "spelled 
down" the school. The home-retu;nring hero from Bin- 
gen on the Rhine was never happierV =' ■'• '■•■ , . 
The other circumstance.. I refer to^wa-s'a- cobri •hnlit' in 
which I participated. Thcfe-were. fotir of :us, ^t^vo young 
fellows belonging to the farm', to Avhora. -of course, the 
neighborhood was familiar. mA' elder brother and my.self. 
I was the youngest member of the parl.v, and a stranger 
to the place. .We had with us an axe. and a full comple- 
ment of dogs. We had no gun. We expected to tree the 
coon, then cut down the tree and let the dogs and the: 
coon have it oiit. : I ha"d:|^ no doubt that this Avould be 
very good fun. We trudg'e'd along for some time, stop- 
ping occasionally to, hear - if there , was any report of 
progress from the dogs, until in the course of our tramp 
Ave unluckily came itito the neighborhood of a hoii!5e where 
[ April 2g, tSgp, 
an elderly man, a widower with a family of grown-up 
children, was being married that very evening to a woman 
of suitable years. I don't know just which one of the evil 
genii presided on the occasion, but if was suggested that 
the proper thing for us to do would be to go down to the 
house and give the old couple a send-off in the way of 
what they called "a serenade." I had no idea what form 
the serenade was to take ; but T went along very willingly. 
The serenade was a A^ery simple affair ; it consisted only 
in standing on the hillside above the house and firing 
stones down on the roof. In a minute the whole wedding 
party came swarming out of the house like a lot of mad 
hornets, or " 
"As bees bizz out wi" angry fyke, 
When plund'ring herds assail their byke." 
Some big' dogs Avere let loose and bid "sic 'em," a gun 
Avas fired, and the chase began. At the A^ery first intima- 
tion of trouble the young farmers took to their heels, my 
brother could keep up with them, but I fell behind and 
very soon lost them in the darkness. I forged ahead, but 
altogether aimlessly; there was no road; it was pitch 
dark, and I knew not hoAv to direct my steps. It was a 
dreadful plight to be in ; alone in the unknoAvn Avoods with 
unseen enemies near and unfriendly dogs sniffing among 
the bushes; lost, Avithout bearing or compass; no shelter 
and a long, cold night in advance ; wandering about, with- 
out knoAving Avhethei- each step Avas bearing me nearer to 
safety or destruction ; afraid to stand still for fear of being 
overtaken; afraid to call otit, for fe^r df being heard by 
the foe. 
But fortunately the pursuit was called off soon and the 
people returned to the house. But I did not loiow that, 
and so kept gropijig along in mortal terror. The pros- 
pect of spending the night alone in the woods was any- 
thing but reassuring, and if I shed some bitter tears it 
is not to be wondered at. I have never posed as a hero. 
Fifteen or twenty minutes, which seemed an age to 
me, thus passed, when I heard some one walking softly 
among the fallen leaves. I stood still, AA^ith my heart in 
my mouth. Then my name Avas called in a Ioav tone, and I 
knew I Avas saA'ed. If I had been rescued from a floating 
plank on the bosom of the tossing sea, I could not have 
been happier. It Avas one of the young men of the farm. 
They had been nearly as much concerned for me as I 
had been for myseF, and had been anxiously seeking me. 
The result of this foolish prank was to take all the vim 
out of us, and Ave made our Avay home silentlj' enough, and 
the festive coons sufifered no harm from us that night. 
The scene of this youthful adventure of mine must have 
been in the near neighborhood of the spot Avhere I sat 
so long afterward. The venerable hillside had not much 
changed, True, right beloAv me were the white cottages 
and the auditorium of a stylish camp ground, and its 
colonnaded boarding house, a sad innovation upon the 
ancient demesne of Pan and the Satyrs ; but still the grand 
old forest extends almost unbroken for many miles. The 
"green-robed senators" of the mighty woods yet stand 
much as they stood when my young ej^es first beheld them. 
The lapse of fifty years is marked by little apparent change 
in a forest where the hand of the lumberman has not en-^ 
croached. The solemnities of the vast woodland, its 
brooding calm, its sequestered depths, its flickering lights 
and beckoning shadoAvs, remain little changed from age 
to age. I do not Avonder that the ancients peopled the 
Avoods with uncouth and romantic shapes. Such was the 
forest described by Keats in his "Endymion" : 
"Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread 
A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed 
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots 
Into o'erhanging boughs and precious fruits. 
* * * Paths there were many, 
Winding through palmy fern and rushes fenny, 
And ivy banks, all leading pleasantly 
To a wide lawn, whence one could only see 
Stems thronging all around between the swell 
(If turf and slanting branches; who could tell 
The freshness of the space of heaven above, 
Edged round with dark trectops? through which a dove 
Would often beat his wings, and often, too, 
A little clotid would move across the blue." 
T. J. Chapman. 
The Sportsman's Den. 
Plow many happy hours are spent in it. It is the one 
room in the house in which the master feels that h=e 
is monarch of all he surveys; one into which his dog 
knows he is Avelcome to come and snooze and pursije the 
festive flea without fear of being chased out with a 
broom in the hands of an irate female. The room is 
not perhaps so tidy as the best spare room, nor its 
furniture set in unvarying geometrical positions; but it 
is as the owner wants it. On the walls hang pictures of 
hunting scenes, one or two stately stag heads, as true 
to life as the taxidermist skill can do; a set of Avide- 
spreading moose horns hang over the mantel, deer 
horns here and there on the walls are used as racks. 
The floor is covered with skins of the bear, deer, and 
Avolf. A rack is well filled with shotguns of different 
makes and bores, and rifles of different calibers. On 
a shelf is loading apparatus. In another comer hang 
the hunting clothes. A center-table is littered with sport- 
ing magazines. Numerous pipes lie conveniently around. 
A large easy chair and a pair of well-worn slippers invite 
to comfort. 
Many happy hours are spent in the little den. On 
entering its door one may leave all business for a time 
behind, and live OA^er the happy hours of the chase. In 
his fancy he again kills the old big buck, and hears the 
music of the fleet-footed hounds bringing the game 
nearer and nearer. He is in camp again, sees the 
twinkling light of the camp-fire, with his comrades sit- 
ting around it. With the delicious night coming doAvn 
and Avrapping the little white tents about like a soft 
cocoon, as one by one the stars swing out their glowing 
lamps in the great tent of the sky. 
The scene shifts, and now he is on the lakes Avith 
his i2-gauge hammerless, bringing doAvn the mallard? 
and blue-Avings and an occasional honker. Or he is 
Avhipping the streams for the speckled trout. Again he 
kills the big four-pound bass that tried his split-bamboo 
to its utmost, and made his reel sing a merrv tune. Or 
he is in the field in quest of quail or snipp- Thus, sifting 
