Sept. 20, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
361 
Julius Again 
J UST when a magazine writer lias sat himself 
down in the name of art and impetus and 
has just gotten hold of a most delightful 
topic to execute in rhythm and prose, and has 
just started the opening and essential paragraph, 
then will something like the following smite the 
atmosphere asunder, and silence will drop in 
clattering fragments. The cause of the shatter¬ 
ing may be thus: 
“O come all you rounders if you want to hear 
The story of a brave engineer; 
Casey Jones was that rounder’s name— 
H’on hay six, h’eight weeler bhoys hee won ’is fame.” 
It happened to me. I was just opening my 
well-known and marvelous literary money-getter, 
“Mary, the Toothsome Seamstress; or, Wanted 
Someone to Sew Buttons on the 
Eight Floor,” when something be¬ 
low, as above suggested, dislocated 
the jaws of harmony. 
"Good Lord! did you hear 
that?” I asked Billikin, seated in fat 
and greasy indifference and smiles 
on his eternal pedestal above me on 
the desk. Billikin winked two eyes 
and held his hands harder than ever 
on his little pot. I always have en¬ 
vied that stomach of his. 
Julius was all excitement when 
he entered. His mustache had 
grown actually one-sixteenth of an 
inch during the last two months, and 
he looked more dangerous and more 
Moscowvitisk than ever. 
“Let me tell you what I saw this 
morning as I was going to work 
around Lake Harriet,” said Julius, 
his eyes taking on an avaricious fish 
glint that was almost Waltonesque. 
His hands clasped and unclasped, his 
breath came in short gasps; I offered 
him a glass of “water.” He re¬ 
fused. He had all the symptoms of bassitis. 
“Just let me tell you what I saw. Just give me 
two minutes, that’s all I ask.” 
I waited till he got his breath. 
“Now, just let me tell you what I saw,” he 
finally said. “I was going around that lake, you 
know. It was early. It was very early. The 
sun was rising. Imagine now the sun rising 
over the little old trees. Suddenly those wands 
of light hit the water. I could see out into the 
lake for blocks. O, my Lord! so many bass. 
They came in twos and threes. They came in 
eighths and elevens. Some of them were so 
close together that there wasn't breathing room. 
They came in layers, in single file, four abreast, 
in companies, battalions—” He became inco¬ 
herent, and I caught him just as he was sink¬ 
ing, fairly unconscious, in his chair. He sat 
there limp and half fainting. I knew instinctive¬ 
ly that it was bassitis. 
I myself was shaking with eagerness. 
“Do I understand you correctly when you 
say that you saw so many bass, or are you just 
using your average methods of getting me 
worked up to fever pitch? Remember, that it 
is yet before season, and anything like this will 
By ROBERT PAGE LINCOLN 
never do. A person with fishing tendencies needs 
quiet and rest, and should be disturbed by no 
manner of means.” 
And a moment thereafter as an afterthought 
I supplied the following: 
"And remember, that if you are not telling 
me the truth, I will go down there and fish and 
get arrested just out of spite work, and you 
won't have anyone to fish with this whole com¬ 
ing summer.” 
"Do 1 mean it!” said Julius, his voice rising 
by degrees. "Say, don't make me sick. The 
lake is swarming with fish. I never saw such 
a bunch of them in all my life. And here it is 
three days before opening, and it is no use going 
out on opening day. You remember last Decor¬ 
ation Day? Ah, a wouldbe angler every two 
feet on that shore line. Such a howling mob 
I’ve never seen. They fished in every way 
known to science and the spiritual. One guy 
you remember had a pole that reached across 
the lake. They had to cut it off on the other 
side near the pavilion for obstructing the traffic. 
No, there's no use going out on opening day. 
And we have laid no plans for going up north 
of Minneapolis. Then what are we going to 
do ?” 
Let me explain that the said Lake Harriet 
is within the confines of the beautiful city of 
Minneapolis, where the flour comes from. Scien¬ 
tists and other people have as yet not decided 
the depth of Lake Harriet, but I think if the 
water was lured out of it, any tourist would 
pay fifty cents admission to look down into the 
abysmal valleys below. And there are fish in 
Lake Harriet. Lake Harriet is where I grew 
up; there is where I used to fish with pins. If 
I had a penny for every fish I have taken out 
of Lake Harriet, I would start to-morrow the 
Lincoln Real Estate and Investment Company. 
Now, here is where Julius wanted me to 
go. Here is where Julius had seen, and having 
seen, had entered upon my presence, and here 
was I counting every moment that passed, wait¬ 
ing in wretched seclusion for the final day, when 
again I could be out with the fish. 
Julius crammed some tobacco into his pipe, 
lit it with infinite care, and deliberately and with¬ 
out any apparent sense of feeling ground the 
head of the match to dust. 
“You know what we are going to do,” he 
said finally, smiling a triumphant smile, having 
come to a certain conclusion. “We are going 
fishing before opening day, and so escape the 
mob and get some fish.” 
“Thanks,” I said, retiring back into my 
Morris. Thanks, old Hat, and once again thank 
you for your thoughtfulness, but when you catch 
me going out before season, slinking 
under the eye of the law, I will let 
you know about it, and three weeks 
ahead of time. I have never been 
noted for any display of nerve, and 
to go out to Lake Harriet where 
there is a park policeman every two 
feet and right under their eyes try 
to catch fish, why—” 
I sniffed my withering disdain 
and retired still further into the jaws 
of the Morris. 
“But you don’t get me, kid,” said 
Julius (I ask here that my audience 
forgive Julius, as I have always been 
forced to forgive him), and an enig¬ 
matic smile spread over his features. 
"We will go out fishing at night and 
still within the limits of the lesal 
opening, and still be there before the 
mob.” 
“How?” I demanded crisply, 
curling my lip at this problem of the 
fourth dimension. “How?” 
“Simple,” said Julius, spreading 
his hands commiseratingly in a man¬ 
ner he had learned from a Frenchman in a bur¬ 
lesque show. “Simple. The 30th of the month, 
the opening day, begins at 12 o’clock midnight, 
don't it? Well, why can’t we be out then and 
fish to our heart’s content with those phosphorus 
baits. You know we used them nicely last sum¬ 
mer.” 
“Of course,” I said, viewing this light with 
a careful eye, “but before 12 o’clock midnight 
there is a space upon which the law sits in grave 
and sullen and authoritative silence, and with 
a soft and soothing voice like the wind at twi¬ 
light murmuring through the jubilant pines de¬ 
mands that fishing be laid off for a little space.” 
“Rum,” said Julius, behind a cloud of smoke. 
“Rum. For that matter if you are scared we 
would not need to start out before 12 o’clock, 
and then we would be safe, but we are going 
to, though. Listen! Right after it gets dark 
the evening of the 29th, I am going to bring 
the canoe down there in the woods back of 
Sutherlands. About 10 o’clock we will go out 
there, take the canoe down to the lake, get in. 
paddle out, and fish. You will come along. You 
know you can’t keep away.” 
It looked like a horrible criminal offense. I 
