134 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Aug. 2, 1913. 
cultivated state the culture of flowers, the matur¬ 
ing of fruits, and where the cold formalities and 
negative civilities of the counting house or the 
market place give place to the elegance of polite 
life when restraints are banished from the host 
or his guests in the true spirit of hospitality. 
The means of enjoyment are supplied with a 
lavish hand and a generous mind for tasteful 
gratification, rural exercises or studious retreat, 
where he can banquet on the luxury of his own 
thoughts. 
The metropolis has many attractions. It is 
made up from the rich and great, the good and 
the bad, but there is a sharp distinction drawn 
between the different conditions that does not 
exist in the country to the same distinct degree. 
In the rural towns and villages there is little 
that is mean or debasing, and one lives more 
among scenes of natural beauty, and it leaves 
him more to the inclination of his mind, which 
is apt to be influenced by the external appear¬ 
ances of natural environments. Such a neighbor 
may be simple and a little rough, but he rarely 
is vulgar, so that the man of elegant refinements 
finds nothing undesirable in his less fortunate 
neighbor in rural life as he does in the crowded 
cities. So that he is willing to cast aside re¬ 
straint and waive the distinction of position to 
enter fully into the enjoyment of common life. 
If we wish to get acquainted with the general 
charms of nature, there is nothing so conducive 
to that end as to pay her frequent visits and 
observe this mingling of cultivated and rustic 
society where everything seems to be the natural 
growth of a regular and peaceful existence. 
I cannot imagine a more pleasing rural sight 
than that on a Sunday morning when the bell 
tolls forth its quiet, solemn, sober melody through 
the village and over the peaceful lawns, and see 
the modest, cheerful, ruddy faces of the village 
cottagers, wearing their best Sunday go-to-meet¬ 
ing finery, and after all the greatest virtuous and 
purest enjoyments is this home feeling what 
Harry Lauder calls “The bonny home circle,” and 
its influence where one can occasionally detect 
through the bloom of youth that blush that 
brings out a venial suspicion of the little tran¬ 
sient riots of the heart and the glances of that 
passion. Oh, need I tell its name! 
The upper part of the Hudson presented a 
somewhat different aspect. While it loses its 
commercial importance, it presented many new 
features as we progressed on our journey, until 
finally our course took a more northerly direc¬ 
tion through Lansingburg and Mechanicsville. 
This neighborhood outside of the towns consisted 
almost entirely of small farmers who owned 
their farms and were of a class equally strangers 
to opulence and poverty. They seldom visited 
the metropolis in search of luxuries. They re¬ 
tained their native simplicity of manners and 
practiced those polite frugal habits so used to 
temperance that they scarcely recognize it as a 
virtue, and T observed in those that came to the 
entertainments at the hotel that their breeding 
seemed superior to their fortune, and contrasted 
with some of the visitors from the city whose 
finery seemed to conquer their breeding. But 
in such cases conscience is a coward, and the 
faults it does not have strength enough to pre¬ 
vent, it does not have justice enouffh to accuse, 
and those individuals are often fonder of people 
that have money than those that have good man¬ 
ners. 
People who live in the large cities, and who 
spend the summer months in the country, must 
have noticed the quiet of Sunday, the machinery 
of the mill, the ringing din of the forge, the 
rattle of the cart. As the dogs are less disturbed 
they bark less frequently, and it certainly was 
wisely ordained that the weekly day of devotion 
should be also a day of rest. All nature seems 
to glory in moral influence, and we feel a soul- 
inspiring tendency quietly stimulated within us, 
and we even feel that we are better men and 
women on Sundays. 
Not the least important place en route was 
that home of female loveliness, Saratoga, with 
its many gay and festive attractions, but as there 
was very little of that element on our program, 
we merely made a passing visit of one day and 
night and then pursued our journey to Bolton 
on beautiful Lake George. 
This northeastern New York country has 
many delightful attractions for tourists, especial- 
A QUICK CATCH. 
ly to those from the big cities. Streams, lakes, 
woods and mountains in variety almost without 
limit. The hotels, if not palatial, are numerous, 
and at least comfortable, with an air of refine¬ 
ment when one meets and mingles with social 
life of city people under delightful auspices. The 
fishing is varied, easily enjoyed and fairly good, 
and in the evening the day is closed with refined 
enjoyments particularly for the ladies. 
The hotel that we stopped at was a large 
one with an air of elegance, and the situation 
was delightful. A beautiful lawn sloped down 
to the water’s edge, studded with trees so ar¬ 
ranged as to break a view of the lake into a 
variety of lovely picturesque views, and the pine- 
clad mountain on the opposite shore blending 
with clouds melting in the distance. Wherever 
we turned, our eyes a new creation seemed to 
bloom. Excepting the hotel, no sign of human 
industry was visible to check the delicious wild¬ 
ness of nature that rivaled in luxuriant variety. 
Land and water were beautifully intermingled 
as though they were combined for the purpose 
to set off each other’s charms with a background 
of rugged rocky mountains partly covered with 
timber. On the valley or foothills the lordly 
oak, the generous chestnut and hickory, the 
graceful elm, and on the margin of the lake the 
yellow and white birch grew in profusion. The 
lordly pine reared his mighty dead and weather¬ 
ed trunk, where the osprey, that harbinger of 
good fishing, built her nest and reared her young 
in perpetual and happy peace. 
We now were ready and willing to abandon 
for a time our traveling for other pleasures and 
resume my old recreation of fishing. We were 
fortunate in acquiring the services of an experi¬ 
enced and agreeable boatman with a nice look¬ 
ing attractively appointed boat, dignified with 
nice plush-upholstered cushions, and in our first 
two hours’ fishing were successful in landing a 
large lake trout that measured 23^ inches long, 
weighing g x / 2 pounds. When we laid the beauti¬ 
ful fish on the lawn at the hotel, the enthusiasm 
was spontaneous and contagious; the joyous dis¬ 
position of the worthy landlord appeared to good 
advantage. He was happy himself, and was 
naturally disposed to make all the world happy, 
and particularly that part of it that made up his 
guests that he always kept in good humor. 
Good humor is the ale and wine of a merry 
meeting, and no companionship is complete with¬ 
out it. And the landlord seasoned the excel¬ 
lences of his dinners with it. There was no epi¬ 
curean sauce on the table; it would have been 
superfluous. Our appreciation of these repasts 
was unanimous, and it would be no venial tres¬ 
pass on the truth to say they were a series of 
culinary poems in which the race of wine rarely 
gained on the dry land of sober judgment. Our 
host withal was one of the wisest and weightiest, 
wisest in the head and weightiest in the pocket, 
with a liberal rotundity at the belt, making nice 
little speeches diplomatically, flirting with the 
good wishes of his guests, all of whom tended 
to tickle their fancy and swell the receipts of 
the hotel in which his policy had few errors. 
Lake George contains some very large and 
millions of smaller black bass, and soon I was 
enlisted in the conquest of some of these gallant 
fighters of the deep water lake. After rowing 
about two miles from the hotel I fished pati¬ 
ently and diligently with the fly, without results, 
and next I tempted them with a grasshopper 
with only limited success. I put on a scarlet 
hackle fly with a cricket added that I found to 
he a very taking piece of bass confectionery. It 
no sooner reached the recognized distance from 
the bottom for bass, acknowledged by many to 
be six inches. Then I had a violent strike from 
a medium sized champion, which I at once recog¬ 
nized as a fierce fighter. With all the attributes 
of his species the fight went on while he was in 
the water, and he proved to be a veritable Mac- 
Duff when he leaped several feet from the water 
with a resolute determination to rid himself of 
the hook and shake himself free, but he finally 
lay with four of his brethren on the hotel lawn 
for the admiration of the guests. 
On one of those rich autumnal mornings that 
nature bestows on this beautiful lake, the sun 
moving in glorious splendor through his ethereal 
crowds, we reluctantly bade farewell to Lake 
George, one of the most beautiful lakes in the 
world, justly a favorite with artists and tourists, 
dotted with a hundred charming islets, its waters 
singularly clear, and its many rugged mountains 
reaching elevations of 2,000 feet. 
(Continued on page 155.) 
