82 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 29, 1899. 
Days Off on Off Days. 
I AM sitting on a mossy' hillock on a rocky Htfle island 
in a lake up in norlhern New Jersey. Resting in the 
shade of maples, looking at the sunlight on the waves, 
and at the minnows sporting in the clear water at my 
feet, a feeling of contentment is with me and I am suf- 
fused with a tingling thrill of happmess such as comes to 
me at home at times when my daughter, steaHng up be- 
hind in my spells of reverie and placing her soft hands 
over my eyes, leans forward and I feel the throb of a 
young heart and the kiss of love on my bald pate as she 
asks, "Guess who!" But I am not at home in that sense 
just now. I am at home, however, at any time when in 
the presence of that older one. Dame Nature; married I 
think she is to Father Time, and yet at liberty to flirt 
with all mankind, while her progeny is scattered over the 
whole world and there are no scandals connected with her 
name. She is stealing upon me now and blinding me with 
her midday searchlight; I feel her breath and hear her 
also say, "Guess who!" Oh, I am getting acquainted with 
her a little at a time. She has fooled me often, and once 
more to-day. I thought I could fish, and in boasting mo- 
ments have said so. I tried to fish this morning, and 
only that part which consists of rowing, of oar-blistered 
hands and sun-blistered nose has been a success. I was 
after bass regardless of size of mouth, and found no 
mouth large enough to put even a word into. I cast flies, 
spinners, shiners and bullfrogs at them with my outfit 
and reproach and expletives with my tongue. I offered 
them everything from cold tea to landing net, and they 
would not even accept the latter. I tried to telephone to 
theui, but Central said, "Busy; ring oft and hang up your 
receiver." Do you know, I think their line was busy, 
inasmuch as mine was not. They rang the bell on me. 
Could I have cut in on them, I would probably have heard 
something like the following: "Give me Oswego." 
"Hello, Small-mouth ; what is it?" "Say, that duffer from 
New York is on the road again." "What line?" "Silk.^| 
"Any f!ies on him?" Yes; just the same as last year." 
"Wliat has he got?" "Gut leaders." "Oh, come off!" 
"1 did." "Make it clearer." "He tried to hook me." 
What struck you?" "lie did." "Whv didn't you make 
a break?" "I broke water." "Is he still fishing?" "Yes." 
"Is that a straight tip?" "It is one of them; he has the 
other." "Your a sinlcer." "That's right." "Was he 
smoking?" "His reel was." "Did you get the butt?" 
"He says so, but he is a liar; he lies in weight and wait. 
He is gone now — gone 'on — gone on himself and his pis- 
catorial proclivities." They may talk thus, and we have 
no less- an authority than Rowland Robinson for it. He 
has written much about the Slang fish. 
With aching back and aching arms I worked this lake 
for five liours steadily, and not a fish in the boat. Wait a 
moment. A fellow once called me a crawfish, but he was 
betting on a sure thing. The poor luck caused me to 
wonder why I left New York to come to this place when 
right at home there is a Fokest and Stream in the 
heart of the New York Life Building up a circulation 
that is by no means dormant, while I contribute $4 per 
year toward the fund and foolishly spend $20 more in 
coming here to increase my own circulation by rowing 
about in the hot sun. "What fools these mortals be!" 
Maybe, but there are other considerations. Here you 
don't have the corners knocked off i'ou on crowded cross- 
ings, and you needn't wear a label reading, "Don't use 
hooks/' If your russet shoes are bespawled you do it 
yourself, and no boozy bum in crowded car rests his 
frowzled head on your shoulder in peaceful slumber. 
Neither do j'ou rise and lift your hat to some stout laun- 
dress and hear her say, as she takes your seat and the 
basket containing the wash catches on your watch chain, 
"Yez the bye kin tark fioine to us leddys." No newsboys 
walk beside you with emblazoned scare hdads held in 
front and appreciating the opportunity to "git to yell" 
shriek "Jarnel, Wurruld!" in your tired ears. Up here 
you escape the turmoil, and the living and moving things 
seem interested, and "toil not, neither do they spin." 
Say, come over to the other side of this island; look 
down there where the shadows of the trees darken the 
water and give to it a look both murky and cavernous. 
What do you think is going on down there? Under 
those lilypads is the lair of a cutthroat; deep in the semi- 
gloom he lies motionless till his prey comes carelessly 
by; then there is a darting gleam;' blood is spilled; mur- 
der is done; a 6in pickerel has swallowed a 5m. shiner. A 
mud turtle is coaling down there and filling his scuttle 
butts. That sedate-looking bullfrog is studying his part 
and resting preparatory to singing a baritone solo in the 
concert at 8 P. M. See that hole in the reeds and bushes 
over there? You may think those shrubs grow on the 
land, but they do not. You might think that hole a tun- 
nel in a hillside, but it is not; it is a canal; and now, sup- 
posing you were dwarfed to a Liliputian or to a Palmer 
Cox brownie, and taking a sardine box for a gondola and 
a souvenir coffee spoon for a paddle, you move into that 
maze. Do you think you would be a gondolier in Ven- 
ice? Well, you would not be. You would be a delinquent 
and suffering thing in Dante's Inferno, and New Jersey's 
pride, the mosquito, is an imp with a forked tail on 
the wrong end and knows all about antitoxine and just 
where to inject it for the desired end. The water snakes 
would tip you over, and if you had as many legs as a 
blue-bottle fly the muskrats would pull every one of them. 
Well, supposing you are just .what you are and a shower 
should come up while the sun was still shining and a rain- 
bow end rested in the top of that big pine tree on the 
mainland. Wouldn't you take that boat, go over there, 
climb that tree, and then, supposing just as you reached 
out to grab that rainbow you lost your balance and fell 
down throiigh the branches and landed a-straddle of a 
darn big bear, and looking backward, like Edward Bel- 
lamy, supposing you should see a big snake — a boa con- 
strictor — come billowing toward you with open mouth, in- 
tent upon swallowing you and the bear, too. What do 
you suppose j^ou would do? Would you fall off or hang 
on and kick that bear's ribs to make him run? I like to 
sit out here and think about these things, and decide 
Yljat I wDHid (ip if the ch^nc?- pccurre4! §0 \% ocpurs \q 
me now that I would like to go fishing up in Sunapee 
Lake, New Hampshire, with Admiral Dewey when he 
gets home; and if I am not greatly mistaken he will be 
glad to go. I would rather be in his boat than in another, 
especially if he did not like me. He is all right, but has 
a way of puncturing tires and making people who don't 
have pleasant diplomatic relations with him and with his 
country walk Spanish. If I could go fishing with him I 
would gladly chop bait. Perhaps he would let me write 
up the trip and not cut the cables— he has not written for 
the magazines; at the same time he seems to understand 
such things. If I could go with him and write up the 
trip and see my name beside his, either in the War Cry 
or Forest and Stream, I would willingly give my fly- 
book to the sporting editor and die happy. But I don't 
think he will go, because there will be so many men and 
women who will fish for him. 
I was out in that hail storm yesterday, and I don't 
know why people always see hailstones as big as walnuts 
or hens' eggs. Those that came down yesterday came 
down like sash weights or like bricks in a riot. At first 
little attention was paid to the gathering gloom; I was 
thinking of my debts, and the first thing noticed was a 
large spatter here and there on the boat bottom, as though 
some one over me had spat and missed. Then the boat 
began to heave from the bow and the waves slapped 
under it; then something hard hit behind me and the 
water around was in miniature eruption. The storm 
started off easy like; then it let out another link, then 
coupled on another boiler and the battle was on; and from 
the conning tower came the command, "Give him the 
port broadside and the I3in. and the machine guns; tor- 
pedo him; ram him; sink him." I was as helpless as a 
Spanish fleet, and like one made for the shore to beach 
the boat. From choice I had rather be a bad actor 
pelted with eggs than a fisherman bruised with such shot 
as was fired that day. The boat was dented where hail- 
stones struck, and I felt as though I had been playing 
with Jim Jeffries. As I stood under the trees a shower 
of twigs and leaves came down through the branches 
with the hailstones, birds were killed, and I was "between 
the devil and the deep sea." If I stayed under the trees 
there was more danger from the lightning; if I had gone 
out into the open field the end would be slow but sure. 
After a while the firing ceased around me, but away down 
the lake I could see the flashes and the boom of the clash 
came back to me over the water, as if in warning not to 
exult in escape. When the lake quieted down I came 
back to this island and cooked my supper; then the pipe 
was sweet and the June bugs batted against the lamp 
chimney while I read from Edward Atkinson's statistics 
to calm myself. The whippoorwill sang without, and to 
those who know his call and the bugle call of "Taps" the 
notes sound much the same. Put out your lights! Often 
have I played that call in military camps, and I obeyed 
the whippoorwill's call as other men have obeyed mine 
from the bugle. Pardon me for talking so much about 
myself; but I am here all alone doing my own cooking 
and chamber work. If there were neighbors I would talk 
about them. Some men go so far as to talk about their 
sisters — particularly so of those sisters who consent to be 
sisters to them. To-morrow I will put the padlock on the 
door and on my lips and again be a quiet oppidan of the 
noisy city until some day the fever is on again and the 
Doctor prescribes a change and a trip into the country. 
That is what they prescribe when all else fails, and it is 
the cheapest in the end and no drug in the market or "in 
your midst." 
When I get home I presume that I shall be careless in 
feeding again and have another dream something like the 
following, which dream had much to do with my de- 
parture from home. It was Friday night — fish-day night — ■ 
hot and close, with a superabundance of huiuidity in the 
air, and the air could not move, apparently, with the bur- 
den. The day had been long and troublesome, and a 
poor lunch, eaten hurriedly in a crowded restaurapt, ill- 
sufficed to stay hunger; and when at my own table I 
more than made amends by disposing of a goodly portion 
of a baked bluefish, and then indiscreetly smoked_ too 
much strong Perique tobacco, at bedtime I was in a 
receptive mood to entertain hobgoblins, deformations and 
malformations of animal or marine life in a dreamy and 
disturbed sleep. As I dropped off into the realms of 
slumber-land I wondered what the solar plexus might be, 
and if it were about or around a pain I thought to exist 
where my girth is greatest. How the weary hours passed; 
they came and went as usual when tired nature is em- 
broiled in a contest with indigestion. Surely there is 
some hideous thing in the room — there in the corner; 
now under the bed; then dragging its distorted and hid- 
'^ous lenrrth along the footboard; I feel it drop at my 
feet, and I bound from my couch and fumble for the match 
safe; but the window that direction was located from was 
a door and the flashes of the electric lamp came from the 
rear street and not from the front. Will I get a light be- 
f or that thing gets me ? I stoop, that my night robe 
may protect my feet, stand on one foot and then on the 
other, wondering which will be bitten first. I try to cry 
out for help, and the voice sounds a vacuum. The 
matches would not light and broke repeatedly, until at 
last one seemed ignited and was thrust under the glass 
globe, and the yellow flame appeared, but no light. 
Thrusting a finger into the light to_ test its reality made 
possible the ejaculation, "Damnation!" Suddenly the 
flame lit up the environs, and there in the bay window, 
bathed in a flood of light with rings of halo about their 
heads, stood three Websters, one a former fishing com- 
panion; Daniel, the expounder of the law and expounder 
of fish heads, and Noah, the dictionary man. On the 
floor and flapping toward me was a huge dogfish. It 
seemed to look appealingly at me, as though asking me 
to right some wrong done in the past, and then I under- 
stood the visitation of Webster No. i and recalled a cod- 
fishing trip down Boston harbor and near Minot Light 
years ago. I had caught that same dogfish, and after life 
was extinct had placed him in the folded and loving arms 
ot my sleeping friend as he lay on his back on the sloop's 
deck. I placed that dogfish in such a way that when my 
friend awoke their eyes woiild meet, and when that came 
about each bore the same pleasing expression as now 
seen. Why Daniel came I know not; maybe from , a de- 
sire to fish again. Noah was there to caution me against 
further misuse of hi§ copyright, The lights ^rew diiT) 
and the three Websters dropped noiselessly, one by one, 
irom out the window and on to the flagging below. Then 
I took that dogfish — that nightmare, or seahorse — by the 
tail and slnng him into the middle of the street and the 
three Websters passed tmder the arc light and faded in 
the shadows, and then that dogfi.sh flopped along after 
them and in turn disappeared. Then I went to bed and 
then awakened. Sweat, just plain sweat, was poui-ing 
from me, and my collar and the pillow were soaked. I 
realized that it was a dream, and the taste of sage dress- 
ing and a strong pipe in my mouth gave me the clew to 
the cause. Like cures like, and I arose to find something 
to eat and to smoke again. Fumbling in the closet of an 
adjoining room in the darkness, I felt what seemed to be 
food — crackers and such were usually kept there. After 
masticating some substance for a while, and being sus- 
picious, I lit a match, and the stuff was a new kind of dog 
biscuit just bought for the pup. Bad dreams, dogfish, 
dog biscuit. If there were blackberry brandy in the house 
■could I be blamed for partaking thereof? 
On the door of my hut someone has carved the name 
"Hager." Perhaps he was the builder. If so, he had 
forgotten a passage which reads: 
"Who builds a churcli to God and not to fame, 
Will never mark the marble with his name." 
The name Hager recalls to my mind an old, white- 
haired gentleman known in my early days. He was a 
sportsman and a gentleman; but any tiling said of hiju 
does not belong here, and later, when in the mood and 
able to verify impressions, I will endeavor to tell about 
him under the heading, "Types of Sportsmen," for he 
certainly was a type by himself, W. W. Hastings. 
Pioneef Days.— IX. 
BY ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. 
Again Josiah went to Canada upon the urgent appeal of 
General Sullivan, then in command there, to Scth Warner 
to come to his aid, but the arrival of an overwhelming 
force from England put an end to all offensive operations 
of the Americans, and a general retreat was ordered, when 
it became Warner's duty to cover the rear and WmS, oft" 
the sick and wounded. 
One evening Josiah and a companion entered the house 
of a habitant, where the}' heard a soldier was lying sick. 
They found him, a handsome young fellow, in the languor 
of convalescence, assiduously tended by a pretty daughter 
of the house, with something more than sympathy in her 
black eyes, and telltale blushes that glowed in her dusky 
cheeks when she was caught in the act of smootliing the 
flaxen hair from the pale forehead of her patient. A 
motherly old dame was laboriously bending her fat form 
over the fireplace, busy with a kettle of pea soup, and only 
turned her head without straightening her body when 
the strangers entered. 
"Good evelin', zhonte-mans," she gave greeting. "Si' 
do'n, si' do'n, 'f 3'ou please. Matilde, gif de zhcntlemans 
some chair," and the daughter set two splint-bottomed 
chairs by the fireside. 
"Thank ye," said Josiah. moving toward the pallet where 
the sick man lay, and looking him over with scrutinizing 
glance. "We come tu git this 'ere chap. Hain't he 
bothered ye 'bout long 'nough? Well, but be you able tu 
travel toAvards hum?" 
"Oh, I guess so," said the young soldier, rising with 
alacrity at the name of home, but as he arose to his 
feet he tottered and sank back to a sitting posture. "But," 
hfe added, with a faint smile on his half-scared face, "1 
don't 'pear tu be very stiddy on my pins just yit." 
"Oh, we'll give ye a lift on a litter — me .an' Sam," said 
Josiah, cheerfully. "Sam, you go aout an' knock up some 
sort of a contraption— a couple o' saplin's wi' some cross- 
pieces." 
"Oh, he too_ seek for go," the girl plead anxiously. 
" 'F you lef it 'ere, we took good care of it, mc an' niah 
mere." 
"I hain't no daoubt on't," Josiah said, significantly, as 
he looked at her eager face, "but the Britishers "11 be along 
ter rights, an' if they got a holt on him. I do' know, 
hangin' mebby, prison anyhaow, an' that will mean dyin', 
the way he is. No, he'll haf tu try runnin'." 
"Yes, me guess so, if dey gain' keel it," the girl as- 
sented. "Oh, moa pauvre ami!" She gave the soldier a 
tender helping hand to don his tattered coat, as ready ;iqw 
to speed his parting as she had lieen to delay it. 
"You goin' heet some super 'fore you gone," said the 
mother, ladling out the soup into bowls and setting them 
on the table with a brown loaf. "De Bostonais is always 
ongry," she laughed as Josiah, without ceremony, drew 
his chair to the board. "Oh, jus' one tam 'go me an Ma- 
tilde was make ready de souper an' wait for mah hoi' 
mans, an' dey come in one grand Bostonais an' 'ee took 
hoff de bread, de lard an' de boutelle whisky on esprit. 
Whoof !_an' way 'ee go! Ah wish me haf de whisky for 
you, mais 'ee take all ! Ah 'ope it choke it, me !" 
Josiah bent a guilty face over his bowl, and knew now 
why the room looked familiar. 
"Me goin' gat boy for he'p you carry it," said Matilde, 
leaving the table and slipping out. 
Presently Josiah and his comrade brought in the rude 
litter, upon which the sick soldier took his place, after a 
folded blanket was spread on it. The soldiers laid their 
guns beside the sick man and set forth in the dusk along 
the highway. 
The white fleeced rapids rushed past them like a flock 
of frightened sheep, Avith a continuous musical clamor, 
sweUing and falling with the waft of night wind. When 
they had gone_ half a mile a swift patter of moccasined 
feet came behind them, and they were overtaken b}' a 
boy. of apparently about sixteen years, bearing a brown 
loaf under his arm. 
"Me come for he'p carry," he panted, out of breath with 
running, as he came up to the litter^ and looked anxiously 
down at the face of the occupant, showing white in the 
fading twilight. 
"You can't carry nothin'," Josiah Sa{4i, ^ootl-naturedly 
as he scanned the slight figure, - " 
"Yas, yas ! Me strong lak leetly hosses." said the bov 
eagerly, and persisted in taking the tall man's place, and 
bearing its burden manfully with an easy swing over the 
fougli place?, often a^King their p|iarg^ if vy§g tired pr 
