70 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July 19, 1913 
young man whose never-failing repartee was a 
whack in the back with his big open palm, and 
a shout of “Hello, old boy!” in their ears as 
though he were calling them a mile off, and oh! 
how often they wished he were. 
“Your remarks about fish in the river is 
the key to the freedom of the place,” Buck said 
to Bob Payne on the morning of Payne’s ar¬ 
rival. “Jobes ought to give you a deed to the 
place. Still, you may catch a fish here if you 
live long enough and fish regularly.” 
Payne recalled that he had led off with a 
note of admiration to Jobes on the morning of 
his arrival. “You have a beautiful place, Mr. 
Jobes,” he had said. 
Jobes, pleased, admitted diffidently that it 
was a pretty place, and with a smile of satis¬ 
faction added, “Yes, nature and myself have 
done it; Nature and Jobes is the firm.” 
On the south of the hotel, stretching for 
miles, was a valley rich in agricultural products, 
and on the east were grand old hills, not dis¬ 
posed in ranges, but thrown in, as it were, by 
handfuls by the great creator. “I think I see 
a river over there among the hills,” continued 
Payne, enjoying the scene from the porch of 
the hotel. “There ought to be a lot of trout 
in such a wild stream.” 
“Yes, I know there ought to be, but there 
ain't,” Jobes explained rather sadly. “I don't 
know what is the matter with the river this 
season. Buck’s been here a month and hasn't 
had a bite.” 
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” replied 
Payne encouragingly. “That laugh of his has 
frightened them back into the deep holes.” 
“Still it was an awfully dull and cold win¬ 
ter here, # and in the spring hundreds of fish 
were found floating about dead.” Jobes went on 
defending Buck in a way. 
“Horrible! What an appalling view of the 
dullness of this place in winter that even the 
fish should commit suicide and drown themselves 
in sheer desperation,” thought Payne as he stood 
eyeing the wildness of the surroundings. 
As though he read Payne’s thoughts, Jobes 
quickly added, “I expect the fish froze to death; 
they sometimes do, you know, but there’s plenty 
of trout to be found up stream.” 
Up stream the boys soon learned meant a 
distance of five miles by direct route, but by 
following the meandering and crooked course 
of the river was more than twice that distance. 
Ten miles in the wilderness, through tangle 
brush, over logs felled by strong winds, with 
fishing rod and basket, was a journey that few 
amateur fishermen cared to take. Just a few 
sportsmen stopping at Jobes’, had ever pene¬ 
trated to that point in the river whose waters 
swarmed with trout. The ease and readiness 
with which they could be taken robbed the fish¬ 
ing somewhat of its romance. The moment the 
fly struck the water a dozen hungry trout rose 
to the surface. The least agitation, like the 
lighting of an insect on the water, would cause 
them to rush to the spot; a twig thrown upon 
the surface would collect a school of them 
where it fell. To a sportsman, like Payne, the 
newspaperman, it was little sport to catch them 
under such conditions, but it was a rich thing 
to know they were there. 
There was little animation or excitement 
about Jobes’ hotel. The voice of the forest 
birds, the lowing of the cows in the meadow, 
the sighing of the wind among the trees, and 
the song of the running stream as it came laugh¬ 
ing and dancing over rocks, frisking around the 
trunks of fallen trees and whirling away in all 
the wantonness of unrestrained freedom, were 
the only sounds that were heard through the 
day. At night the owl hooted solemnly in the 
woods, the frogs croaked along the shore of 
the river, the fire-flies flashed their tiny torches, 
while the stars shone brightly over all from the 
sky above. If anyone shouted, a thousand voices 
echoed back the sound. If any one sang, hun¬ 
dreds of voices prolonged the song; while 
through all the night sounds, silence seemed to 
be struggling for dominion, and one is forced to 
say, while a hundred voices are heard at once, 
“How still it is!” 
The history of Jobes’ visitors repeats it¬ 
self. In the day time they lounged around won¬ 
dering at their own immense capabilities for 
doing nothing. Everybody went there for rest 
and health, and they followed the old adage, 
“Early to bed and early to rise.” The day usual¬ 
ly began with the sound of laborious pumping, 
as though a wing of the house were on fire and 
the engines had suddenly arrived. The pump’s 
last hydraulic groan was a sigh of relief to the 
guests, as well as a signal to get up. A little 
later the guests saw the result of all this pump¬ 
ing in their baths, the water being of a yellow¬ 
ish brown, full of little sticks, and with a musty 
smell about it that clung to the sponge for days. 
After everyone was up and dressed and down 
for breakfast, they invariably walked out in the 
yard and looked up at the weather cock which 
was a perfect genius of eccentricity. Jobes, the 
inventor of this unique article, usually appeared 
on the scene to explain its mechanism, reading 
from a weather chart, which was a piece of 
white paper scored all over with zig-zag lines 
indicating what direction the wind had been 
taking since yesterday morning. Whereupon 
the guests made their own remarks and anno¬ 
tations and then went in to breakfast. On the 
way some of them would stop in the hall to 
consult the barometer—some smilingly, some 
frowningly and some with an air of hopeless 
resignation, for the weather and crops were the 
all-important subjects to discuss at Jobes’. When 
a newcomer arrived and asked, “What sort o’ 
weather have you had here lately?” the older 
guests felt that he had put the leading question, 
and all would become mentally confused as to 
whether it was or was not raining on Monday 
last. They became inexpressibly relieved when 
Jobes with great presence of mind would ad¬ 
mit that “it hadn’t bin much to boast of.” 
Notwithstanding the undeniable charm about 
Jobes’ place, the eyes of his visitors were soon 
opened to the fact that the boundaries for exer¬ 
cise immediately surrounding the domain were 
limited. They were strongly advised by Seth, 
the hardy young man-of-all-work around the 
hotel not to go to the garden on account of 
the bees, “fer they’ll come buzzin’ an’ floppin’ 
again’ you when you’re least expectin’ it.” Well, 
why not walk to the meadow, then? Why not? 
Because of the cow. To the barnyard then. 
“Oh, you can’t walk there ’cause it’s so mucky, 
but if you really want exercise and at the same 
time do some good, you kin git some sticks an’ 
beat around the barn fer rats. They swarm 
there as big as rabbits an’ you may stand a 
chance of killin’ some.” The invitation is de¬ 
clined with thanks by the guests. Then there 
is just one place left—the chicken yard. “But 
you’ll better look through the gate first before 
you go in and see if Tige is tied up; sometimes 
he’s loose,” adds Seth. Tige was a big, beauti¬ 
ful white bulldog with a fixed idea of every¬ 
one who came about the place being a chicken 
thief. 
One night, after supper, the boys sat around 
on the porch of the hotel, smoking their pipes 
and listening to the rain as it pattered on the 
roof and rustled among the forest leaves. The 
tree-frog had ceased his music, and all the wild 
forest notes were hushed. It was a soothing, 
pleasant sound, the steady falling of the rain 
on the roof and its rustle among the leaves. 
Previous to coming out on the porch, Payne had 
suggested to Walker and Melvin the artistic 
channel into which the conversation was to 
flow, knowing well that Buck was utterly un¬ 
acquainted with the people and the style of life 
that would form their conversation, and that 
he would not admit, point blank, that he was 
so out of the aristocratic world as not even to 
have heard of the people they proposed to talk 
about. The boys felt they owed Buck a jolt 
or two for the many whacks in the backs he 
had given them, and the stale jokes he had 
sprung. Payne led the conversation with the 
other fellows joining in with stories of some 
persons of quality with whom they pretended 
to be on the most intimate terms. The aristo¬ 
cratic whirlpool into which the three men were 
now drawn progressed wonderfully, each man 
doing his best to score. Buck realized that his 
ignorance was being made their bliss, and he 
mentally swore a terrible oath that he would 
get even. Melvin had just finished a framed- 
up story about Lord DeBaxter. “Why, you 
know dear old Baxy, don’t you Payne? Every¬ 
body knows him.” But before Payne could 
answer, Buck broke in with: “Why, I know 
that guy. My friend, Duke Sewerage, who was 
on a visit to America last year, introduced me 
to him while we were at Newport. You know 
I met the duke two years ago while traveling 
abroad. We did the roundabouts of Paris to¬ 
gether.” 
None of the boys pretend to notice him, 
but get up and walk away as though he had 
said something too vulgar to be tolerated for 
a moment. By this time the rain had grad¬ 
ually ceased, and the stars had come out bright 
and beautiful. Payne knocked the ashes from 
a long cherrywood-stemmed pipe, and put it 
into the pocket of his sporty-looking coat, at the 
same time saying with studied politeness: 
“Gentlemen, I move that we retire, get up early 
and all go up stream; I’m hungry for a mess 
of trout.” 
In unison Walker and Melvin seconded the 
motion, Buck remaining silent. Finally, Seth, 
with a queer looking pipe stem, from which the 
bowl had long since dropped off in his hand, 
said: “Well, I move that before you start, that 
you all go behind the pig-stye and dig fer angle 
worms. The shiners up here are kind o’ shy 
of that new-fangled city bait. To my way of 
thinkin’ a few squirming, wriggling worms 
outen that black airth back there would bring 
you a bigger string of fish than all the silk 
flies in your shiny tin boxes.” 
[continued next week.] 
