FOREST AND STREAM 
303 
net. There was a ledge of rock near here and, 
hearing a rustle, I glanced that way and saw a 
mink watching me, and as I stood perfectly still 
it ran along the shore, now and then stopping to 
eye me, and when I sent one of my little coach 
flying through the air forty or fifty feet at it, it 
dashed away with a final scrambling. This was 
the common animal in these solitudes, and on 
many days, drifting and casting in the clear 
water, I had them as companions, watching me 
from the rocky shore along which they ambled 
in search of food. 
This was an angler’s paradise, as almost every 
time my fly dropped I took a fish. They were all 
brook trout, ranging from a half to three-quarters 
of a pound, full of life and vim. There were ten 
of us. The doctor and I stood not on the order 
of angling, but fished, and I think we delighted 
the eyes of Tom and George, now chefs at the 
new camp, with thirty-nine trout. 
This log cabin of Camp Weber was a joy for¬ 
ever. It was made entirely of logs, stood in a 
little birch forest about twenty feet above the 
lake and faced the big mountain, so that you 
could almost cast from the piazza. There was 
one big living room with a lusty stove in the 
center as a piece de resistance. In one end were 
six bunks which the men had filled with fresh 
and fragrant cedar branches, over which our 
blankets were spread. A small room beyond was 
the kitchen, the men having tents or leantos in 
the clearing. 
I wonder if there is anything more delicious 
after a day’s travel through ..the forest where the 
air is pure and uncontaminated, than broiled 
trout—trout caught half an hour before by your¬ 
self or your friend, crisp bacon that has been 
“raised by hand,” coffee made for the gods and 
somehow intercepted by Tom, hot cakes which 
had to be nailed to the table to prevent their fly¬ 
ing out of the window, and maple syrup raised 
in the private forests of San Souci. I have dined 
with the shade of Lucullus at Tusculum and am 
familiar with epicurean joys, but I cannot con¬ 
jure up in the wells of the imagination a mpre 
delightful memory than that which lingers about 
this first night at Croche and the delight of 
our attendants, as clever at cooking as at pad¬ 
dling. 
Then the aftermath—the roaring fire, the clear, 
cold night, the cries of strange animals, the tales 
and stories that fitted into it, the plans for to¬ 
morrow. Ah, it is delightful to be lured into the 
heart of nature when the environment is as it 
should be. Our friend the doctor and our host 
were twins in many respects. They were about 
the same size, both brilliant in their respective 
professions, but what was really important, the 
most extraordinary story-tellers that ever graced 
a camp or cast a fly or dallied with the truth and 
angling. We had a choice library, an old edi¬ 
tion of Izaac Walton, some of Dr. Van Dyke’s 
works, and as for art, you had only to throw open 
the shutter of the windows and there was a 
framed landscape of ineffable beauty. 
Speaking of nerve and angling reminded me 
of a story I have never seen in print. A well- 
known angler, coming from the salmon country 
one season, boarded a train which passed a log¬ 
ging district, and found the car partly filled with 
half-drunken loggers of the hardest lignum vitae 
description. It did not take him long to discover 
that the lumber jacks were insulting the women 
the speaker smiled at the astonishment in their 
and making themselves particularly offensive and 
vicious. Things went on growing worse, when 
suddenly a man in the end of the car got up and 
took a step down the aisle. He was small, but 
his handsome, well-cut face had a hard, deter¬ 
mined look, and in his arm gleamed the blue 
barrel of a repeating rifle. “Hey there, you!” 
he shouted. The lumber jacks looked around 
and two or three rose. “You fellows have in¬ 
sulted these women long enough. Stop it!” and 
faces as he sat down. The swearing and obscen¬ 
ity increased, and two or three men started up 
the aisle to see what kind of a creature had de¬ 
fied the car. The man with a gun was on his 
feet. “Stop!” he cried, his voice cutting the air 
like a knife. “Stop, you miserable hounds, stop!” 
and the blue muzzle dropped so that they could 
look into it. They stopped and the car slowed 
down at the same time. “I have a ball here for 
everyone of you,” came the clear-cut, steely 
words, “and if you don’t do just as I say you are 
going to get it. Stand up, up with you.” A few 
moves goes down.” So they stood there while 
arose, swaying, and others made ready to rush 
him. “Now, then, I am going to count five, and 
if every man ain’t on his feet and hands up, I’m 
going to fire ! One—two—three—four”—all 
were up, and by this time the train had stopped. 
“Open the door and march out.” Out they went, 
the face of the man with the gun white and red, 
and his eyes gleaming sure retribution. “Get on 
to the platform over there,” came the icy orders, 
and they lined up. “Now the first man that 
the engine wooded and watered and at last it 
moved out, the man with the gun covering the 
gang from the back platform, then going in to 
receive the thanks of terror-stricken women and 
children and the conductor, who tried in vain to 
learn his name. 
He wrote “Little Rivers,” and we had been 
thinking of him all day. I tried to imagine Dr. 
Henry Van Dyke holding up a gang of ruffians 
at the point of a gun. The last time I saw him 
was in my own library, where he stood with one 
of my pet humming birds on his finger, that lie 
(Continued on page 297.) 
Charles Frederick Holder Showing a Leaping Tuna, 183 Pounds, That Towed His Boat Twelve 
Miles in a Four-hour Fight, 
