230 
[SEtT. art J iQot. 
good bass fishing there at the present time, barring too 
long continuance of the present rains. 
Mr. Charles Lawrence, Mr. H. Miner, Mr. Paul Riebe, 
Mr. Tom Waters, the brothers Strumm and Mr. Winfield, 
all of this city, are among those who leave this afternoon 
for the Fox Lake chain for a little session with the big- 
mouthed bass. E. Hough. 
Hartpoed Building, Chicago, III. 
— ^ — 
Educating Dogs for the Gun* 
In a previous comnnanication I endeavored to show 
that it is a mistake to treat sporting dogs as if they were 
machines, and expect them to do what is required of 
them without previous training, and to obey you, without 
taking any pains to tmderstand their various tempera- 
ments and dispositions. Some people mistake timidity 
for stupidity, and scold a dog when they should encour- 
age him; others^ instead of allowing the animal to exer- 
cise his intelligence, and watch to see the result, will 
rate him and call hhu in when they should leave him 
alone. In this way many a good dog gets spoiled at 
starting by a too impetuous and unreflecting owner, A 
few examples will make my meaning clearer. 
Bill was a liver-and-white English setter too long in 
the leg and light in the barrel to catch the eye of a judge, 
but he had good loins and shoulders, and, consequently, 
great speed. His head could not be improved upon, 
and he had a bold, independent, devil-may-care expres- 
sion of countenance that there was no mistaking. It was 
one I2th of August, while shooting with some friends, 
that I saw him first, and became his owner, Birds were 
wild and scarce, and Bill was the first dog tried. Ranging 
wide, using the wind well, and carrying his head high, he 
was not long in finding birds, and made two or three 
points; but the birds rose to guns that missed them, and 
after that the dog appeared to take no more trouble, 
simply running up all the birds he could find, as if he 
had never pointed one in his life. He was severely pun 
ished, but for all the notice he took of the whip the 
keeper might as well have beaten a carpe, and the mo- 
ment he was set going again his conduct was as bad as 
before- — even more defiant. Finally he was taken up 
for good and condemned- to death. Having my own 
ideas as to what was wrong, I offered to take him rather 
than he should be done away with, and he went home 
with me by train that night. He was n.ot shot over again 
till Sept. I, and then I tried him at partridges, leaving 
him to range as he liked till he got on to birds. As on 
the moors, he ranged wide, and began the day by making 
a perfectly steady point; but, as I killed birds over him, 
and continued to do so pretty regularly, the result was 
that he took the greatest pains, and never made an in- 
tentional mistake all day. Moreover, he took a proper 
view of his share of the work. He would put up with a 
fair amount of misses, but work for a bad shot he would 
not. He took the gun on trial, just as the gun did him. 
If the shooting was to his satisfaction, even though birds 
might be scarce, he was game to run till he could run 
no more; but if the shooting was bad, he treated every 
one concerned with contempt. Having speed, he covered 
a great deal of gromid, and one hot September afternoon 
I was obliged to take him up. It was my keeper who 
drew attention to his exhausted condition as he was 
pointing some partridges in a bracken bed, and warned 
me that to overwork so keen a dog was to risk injuring 
him permanently. Bill was allowed to have just that 
one point, and then, while drawin.g up to fresh bi'-ds, 
ahead, we slipped the lead on and took him home. He 
scarcel}^ noticed dead and wounded birds, being of 
opinion. no doubt, that it was our business to 
find them, but one day he astonished us in a turnip field. 
We had been a long time looking for a towered bird, and 
were about to abandon the search when Bill, who was 
filling in his spare time by casting about in his usual 
independent fashion, came galloping past. Just opposite 
to me, without slackening speed, he dipped his head 
into the turnips, raised the dead bird for an instant above 
them, and dropped it, as much as to say, ■'There's your 
bird. Why don't you pick it up and come on?" 
The previous season I had fallen in with a young Irish 
setter. A friend who did not keep a kennel had had two 
given to him, and offered me my choice of one if I would 
break in both. Meg was of the compact kind, of a placid 
disposition, and, being slow, we thought she would do 
useful work inside the wide ranging of Bill. Having 
been put through some preliminary training, her first 
day with the gun, Aug. 20, was the making of her. I 
took her to the moor edge to look for a certain brood of 
blackgame, but her first point was at a covey of par- 
tridges, and I shot a brace rather than disappoint her. 
Much encouraged, she soo.n found the blackgame, and 
lay at her point while I killed three young cocks. On 
the way home her Irish blood asserted itself, and she 
pointed a couple of snipe. From the first she behaved 
like a steady old setter, and no one would have taken 
her for a youngster; but she had a fault — indolence. So 
easy was her temper that it was difficult to get her into 
condition, and sometimes, when she was in a particularly 
lazy humor, it was necessary to drive her away with the 
whip before she would range. But one could not be 
angry with such a sweet-tempered, affectionate creature, 
and, eventually, her very laziness turned out to be an 
advantage, for, so cunning did she become in making 
every use of the wind, so as to give herself the least 
exertion possible, that nothing was left behind, and I 
had to thank her for many an odd bird that most dogs 
would have passed. In short, .she exactly answered the 
purpose for which she was intended, working close and 
independently of Bill. It is generally a mistake to run 
two dogs together that do not back, but such was not 
the case with Bill and Meg, for, although both might be 
on separate coveys at the same time, either would remain 
motionless till you had finished shooting over the other. 
On day, on entering the corner of a 20-acre turnip field! 
Meg turned sharp down a steep hollow and immediately 
dropped to a cove, while Bill, ranging straight up the 
field, was lost to view. T took two rises out of Meg's 
Uri^, and, indeed, followed some of tliem out gf the field 
before going to look for Bill. The turnips were very 
heavy, and, on reaching a point whence the whole field 
was visible, it was some time before we could see any- 
thing of Bill, but at last we made out a white speck in 
the far distance, which proved to be a portion of his head. 
He was down tf^ a cove.y, and looking anxiously over his 
shoulder toward us. Tt is satisfactory to add that he had 
his reward 
Tbis was th.e dog condemned on the moors at the be- 
ginning of the .game season, and he had not altered in 
character at all. Aug. 12 came around again, and his 
late owner asked for the loan of him for the first week. 
Bill was accordingly dispatched some twenty or thirty 
jniles by rail to the moor whence he had come, and from 
a different station lo that which he had arrived at. A 
fevy davs '.'.fter I received a letter from my friend stating 
that Bill had bolted on the moor with a pair of couples 
and a chain, and had not been heard of since. T sent 
for the keeper. "Tom," said I, "has Bill come home?" 
"Yes. sir: I fotmd him outside the kennel at 4 o'clock 
this morning with a pair of couples and a chain. He was 
wet, and. oh dear, he was glad to see me." Bill had 
found his way home over a country he had never seen, 
and finished ^he journey by swimming a dangerous river 
in heavy flood and in the dark. He. never left home 
again, and with Bill and Meg T commenced breeding. — 
A. C. in London Field. 
The Evidence of a Dogf. 
In the Supreme Court to-day there was argument in a 
State case which is absolutely novel in its character, so 
far as North Carolina is concerned. The case comes from 
Pitt county, and the question is whether the evidence of a 
dog is legal evidence. Bloodhounds tracked a thief to 
his lair. The jury believed the evidence of the'dogs. The 
thief was convicted. He appealed, on the ground tbat 
dogs' evidence is no evidence. The State says it is. The 
Attorney-General so argued te-day. Able lawyers, in- 
cluding ex-Governor Jarvis. say they stand by the dog 
in the matter. — Raleigh (N. C.) Correspondence Balti- 
more Sun. 
— • — 
^Mid Reef and Rapid —XXL 
BY F. R. WEBB. 
While the other three were easing their canoes by hand 
down over the villainous set of reefs upon which I had so 
nearly wrecked Frankie. I paddled leisurely across to the 
spring, and landed and inspected the ground, with a view 
to going into camp, further progress being clearly out of 
the question for to-day, as it would take all the afternoon 
to dry the Colonel out. 
I was soon joined by the rest of the party, and Mary 
Lou was drawn up alongside of the bank and emptied of 
everything, and the last drop of water sponged out. Al- 
though, like the rest of us, the Colonel was provided with 
waterproof bags in which to pack his various belongings, 
with his usual careless haste in packing, hone of these 
were fastened, and there wasn't a dry thread in his entire 
outfit. His blanket bag seemed as heavy as lead, as I 
lugged it labori.ously up the bank, and, after I had in- 
verted the bag ^nd dumped the bl'ankets out, I poured a 
bucketful or so of water, still in reserve, out of the bag, 
and. as Lacy and I unrolled the blankets and, taking them 
by the ends, twisted them into huge woolen ropes and 
wrung them out, the water flowed in gallons from them. 
In the meantime the Colonel had performed the same 
duty by the various articles in his clothes bag, and present- 
ly all the trees, rocks and bushes in the vicinity were 
decorated with wet blankets, shirts, handkerchiefs and the 
miscellaneous accessories ustially to be found in a well- 
regulated gentleman's clothes bag, and technically known 
to the trade as "gent's furnishings." ' 
.^lliis done, the oiled canvas pockets, hung up under 
the gunwales of Mary Lou, were taken out, and the water, 
together with their pulpy contents, poured- out of them, 
and the pockets turned inside out to dry. A. small bag 
found in one of them, containing a thick, brownish paste, 
proved to be the Colonel's sttpply of smoking tobacco, 
while another shapeless, sticky mass, in a cigar box, was 
identified as the remains of the Colonel's cigars. 
"Look at this match bottle!" exclaimed Lacy, holding 
up a small, large-mouthed quinine bottle, full of water of 
a bluish, sulphurous hue. ''The Colontl doesn't even lake 
time to put the cork in tightly." 
Tt was fully half-past two when we got the cargo of 
Mary Lou finally disposed of, and by this time we were ■ 
ravenously hungry, and in good condition to do justice to 
the ample lunch found in the mess chest, and the good, 
strong lemon i5reparation I put Up as an appetizer before 
the lunch was peculiarly acceptable, for we were all 
fatigued, wet and run down, as well as hungry. 
We found ourselves, when we had leisure to look 
around us, on a very beautiful camp ground, A cold 
spring gushed out in a strong flow of water from under 
the roots of a clump of trees, and ran rippling over a 
bed of sand and bright pebbles into the river, a few yards 
away, from which the ground sloped gently up to a height 
of some 12 or isft., in a fine, hard, sandj' beach, over- 
grown with a thin, coarse, wiry grass, A short distance 
back, the ever-present limestone cropped out in great, flat 
ledges, covered with dr}' moss and lichens. A fine grove 
of trees spread over the place, the soil among which, as 
well as among the ledges, was a firm, hard, white sand. 
Fifty yards back from the river the ground descended 
again, into a dry, rocky gully, with here and there pools 
of clear, brown, dead water, in which little black specks 
of tadpoles darted and wriggled by thousands — the place 
was evidently an Lsland at periods of high water. In 
front the river rippled and murmured musically, while 
the drone of the water, tuinbling down the foot of the 
falls, and over the big fish dam 100 yards above, fell upon 
our ears in a drowsy, soothing cadence, rising and falling 
on the gentle breeze, which rippled the placid waters in 
front, and rustled through the shimmering leaves overhead. 
It wa^ a Ipvely spot for a tranquil, quiet 3vnd^y ^fter^ 
noon. It was a fatal spot, however, and had a sad his- 
tory, for where the gently sloping sand bank now lay 
was once a high, bluff-like bank, upon which stood the 
Columbiafi mill, which, with all the houses round about 
it, quite a little village, as is usually the case with these 
Shenandoah milling neighborhoods, was carried away in 
the great flood of 1870, which rushed in unparalleled height 
and fury, and with appalling suddenness, down the river, 
leaving ruin, devastation and death in its path from the 
elevated lands of Augusta county to the Potomac, some 
eight or nine lives being lost at this one place alone. The 
very bank itself was cut out and carried away, leaving 
only this gently rounded sand bank, while back of the 
gully, and for half a mile or so up and down the river, 
and looyds. wide, is a broad, barren trail of loose boulders, 
rocks and stones of all conceivable sizes and shapes where 
once had been rich, smiling corn lands. Fifty yards below 
the spring and the spot selected for our camp, a few 
blackened, splintered, weather-beaten posts stood up out 
of the sand. These marked the location of the mill — mute, 
appealing monuments to the disaster of twenty-three years 
before. 
The canoes were leisurely unloaded of their cargoes, 
and. draAvn ashore and located for the night on a level, 
sandy .shelf, close to the river and some 4 or 5ft. above 
the water. Frankie was again leaking a little, so, before 
making up the bed and tent for the night, she was turned 
bottom upward, and an examination revealed the fact that 
one of her new patches had rubbed off on the rocks of the 
falls above. The leak was a very small one, however, and, 
not caring to take the trouble of again patching it, I sim- 
ply daubed the place heavily with asphalt, rubbing it well 
in with a small, stiff brush, extemporized by cutting a 
jXin. twig from the nearest sj^camore, and pounding one 
end into hmsh-like slivers with a stone. The leak at- 
tended to, the canoe was righted, and the bed and tent 
made up, along with the others. While I was fixing my 
canoe, George and Lacy had erected the dining fly over 
the mess table, up under the trees, some little distance up 
the sloping ground above the canoes, and the place had a 
comfortable, camp-like aspect. 
"I shouldn't like to be caught out here in high water, 
much," said Lacy, as he adjusted his campstool under one 
end of his mattress, and, with book in hand and pipe in' 
mouth, dropped into a comfortable attitude upon it. "We 
would most likely be cut off, as the water would quickly 
run- through that gully behind us. there." 
''Yes, it would be very apt to," said George, "and the 
high land is a quarter of a mile away, with one or two rail 
fences between. However, we are not likely to have any 
particularly high water, with this dry weather, so we 
won't worry about it," rising as he spoke and sauntering 
down to his canoe with his own mattress in mind. 
His eye rested on his fishing rod, leaning across one 
end of his tent. He picked it up to take it down for the 
night, but before untying the line from the leader he 
stepped idly to the water's edge, and, with a light cast, 
laid the flies out evenly on the smooth, clear surface. 
There was a rush and a splash, which sent the water in 
widening circles out over the level surface, while the line 
tightened, and the steel-spring-like rod bent into a c'res- 
cent. Without a word George reeled in and landed the 
iVa-pounder, and placed it in his fish bag, Avhich he made 
fast to a stake driven in at the water's edge. After one or 
two more casts, which met with no results, he returned to 
his tent and took down his rod and stowed it away. Lift- 
ing his mattress and bedding out of his canoe, which, as 
usual, was folded in a compact mass and encased in a 
black, rubber sheet, he rejoined the rest of the party, and 
proceeded to make himself comfortable. The delicious, 
golden afternoon was too seductive to admit of more thati 
lying round, with book or writing materials, pipe or cigar, 
and simply enjoying the luxury of living and breathing 
in it. ^ 
The public road ran along the further bank of the 
gully, back of our camp, and, toward evening, a constant 
stream of vehicles of every description, interspersed with 
horsemen, horsewomen and pedestrians, returning from 
the "Association"' meeting at Luray. a few miles distant, 
pased by. Our tented canoes attracted a great deal of 
attention, and not a few were the hails we were called on 
to answer. A foot path ran right through our camp, un- 
der the trees along the rfver bank, and parallel with the 
road, along which pedestrians occasionally passed. 
"Git on to the dood !" exclaimed George, in an under- 
tone. 
We looked up quickly. A colored gentleman was swing- 
ing briskly along the path in our direction, with a jaunty, 
springy step and air. He had on tan-colored shoes, pointed 
at the toes, and well-polished, in spite of the dusty roads, 
having evidently flecked the dust off of them with his 
handkerchief, one corner of which protruded from his- 
breast pocket, after leaving the road and turning into the 
by-path. Above the tan-colored shoes appeared a pair 
of well-fitting trousers, of a Well-marked green and gray 
stripe, in a high state of crease; a brown, cutaway coat, 
in the lapel of which was pinned a bright, buttonhole 
bouquet; a white shirt with high color, encircled by a 
bright, blue tie of the fotu--in-hand persuasion, and a dark, 
chocolate face, ornamented with a natty moustache, well 
curled at the ends; the entire outfit surmounted by a 
broad, flat, fi-esh-looking straw hat, encircled by a bright, 
red ribbon, and set jauntily on one side of his head. 
He carried a new-looking guitar, swung round his neck 
with a broad, green ribbon, upon which he was carelessly 
strumming as he swung along, humming, meanwhile, a 
fragmentary air. 
"Hi, there !" exclaimed George, sharply, as he swimg 
past us, glancing curiously right and left at us and our 
outfit, without turning his head. 
He brought up all standing, at this peremptory sum- 
mons, looking apprehensive and ill at ease, as though in 
the hands of suspicious characters. 
"Lemme see that guitar," commanded George, rising 
from his recumbent attitude to a sitting posture, and 
reaching out for the instrument. 
He slowly and reluctantly lifted the broad, green ribbon 
over his head, first carefully removing the straw hat with 
the bright, red band, and, with many misgivings, handed 
the cherished instrument over to George, as though doubt- 
ful if he would recover it again from such a burly, dis- 
reputable-looking individual. 
George is a skillful performe; upon ^UI stringe4 iostru- 
4 
