590 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May io, 1913 
Published Weekly .by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 
Charles Otis, President. 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary. W. J. Gallagher, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
CORRESPOlVDKXCR— Forest and Stream is the 
recognized medium of entertainment, instruction and in¬ 
formation between American sportsmen. The editors 
invite communications on the subjects to which its pages 
are devoted, but, of course, are not responsible for the 
views of correspondents. Anonymous communications 
cannot be regarded. 
SPRSCRIPTIONS: $3 a year; $1.50 for six months; 
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This paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 
the United States. Canada and Great Britain. Foreign 
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tions, respectively, within one year. Forms close Monday 
in advance of publication date. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug, 14, 1873. 
SOME GUIDES AND THEIR WAYS. 
We have adverted before now to the way 
some Maine hotel keepers have of recommend¬ 
ing as guides incompetent individuals who hap¬ 
pen to be in their debt for board, and who work 
it out in this way. The whole subject of the 
relations existing between the visiting sports¬ 
men, the hotel or camp keeper and the guide 
might profitably be discussed, for there is no 
question that some features of the prevailing 
system are essentially adverse to the interests 
of the visitor. It would manifestly be a gross 
error to make any sweeping assertion which 
should apply to all resorts and all guides. Human 
nature in Maine is just the plain every day human 
nature we find the world over. Some men are 
honest and some are dishonest. Men in the 
Maine woods have a living to make, and pre¬ 
cisely as with other folks outside of the woods 
some make the living honestly and some dis¬ 
honestly. Premising that nine out of ten are 
honest, the tenth is so ubiquitous as to war¬ 
rant our giving him some attention. 
Among the numerous, camps for sportsmen 
in Maine may now and then be found one which 
is conducted in a way not very different from 
the manner in which it would be conducted if 
its chief purpose were to sell as much whiskey 
as possible in a season. And there are guides 
whose chief intent appears to be to keep their 
“sports” within the sound of the dinner horn 
of the camp to which they are attached. Osten¬ 
sibly in the employ of the man from Boston or 
New York or Philadelphia or Chicago, they are 
actually in the service of the camp proprietor, 
and look to his interest first, last and all the 
time. Many an honest fellow, indeed, is in vir¬ 
tual bondage to the camp proprietor, and the 
slavery galls him. He is not playing fair with 
the man he is guiding, and he knows it. When 
he tells his employer that old stock story that 
the fish are not liiting to-day, but they did last 
week, he lies, and because he lies he despises 
himself for the lie and would get out of the 
necessity of lying if he could. He cannot eman¬ 
cipate himself, however, because of his real or 
fancied double obligation to his two employers 
with their diverse interests—the only interest of 
the camp keeper to keep the visitor at his own 
place, and the true interest of the visitor to go 
to some other place. As one guide has well put 
it, such a person has two fires to tend. 
The evils here outlined are very real and 
very widespread. A correspondent says that his 
unfortunate experience has been always to em¬ 
ploy guides with axes to grind. The remedy he 
had resort to was to study up his own fishing 
countrjq lay out his own routes and persists in 
pursuing them in the face of the protests of his 
guide. His experience appears to have made 
him impatient of all guides and distrustful of 
their capacity and honesty of intention, a con¬ 
clusion, we need not say, unnecessary. There 
are many so-called guides who are lost the in¬ 
stant they stray from a familiar trail or get off 
from the buckboard road. But there are others 
who are competent and skilled masters of wood¬ 
craft, natural hunters, explorers and woodsmen, 
and who would be honest, too, with the man 
who employed them if they were accountable 
to him alone. They would be thus solely answer- 
able to the sportsman if employed by him direct¬ 
ly, without any intermediaries. The remedy of 
the whole trouble is to be found in direct em¬ 
ployment of independent guides, instead of in¬ 
direct employment through camp keepers. Then 
the guide will feel that he is answerable to the 
visitor alone; that he may serve the true in¬ 
terest of the sportsman, and not be in peril of 
the woods’ boycott. For there is a woods’ boy¬ 
cott. It works in this way: If the guide hired 
for the sportsman by the camp keeper does not 
exploit the sportsman for the camp keeper’s 
benefit, he does not get employment next time. 
A system of independent engagements be¬ 
tween the guide and the guided would surely 
work to the benefit of the Maine visitor, and 
it would as certainly be welcomed by the guides 
and elevate the standard of the pursuit and the 
self-respect and responsibility of the men en¬ 
gaged in it. 
AN IDEALIZATION OF SPRING. 
Clad in soft green garments, spring comes 
tripping o’er the field. Her bright young smile 
and rippling laughter dispel the deep-set frown 
and melancholy sigh of winter and drive him 
back to his barren haunts. She glances upward 
and the dull gray sky is a transparent blue 
flecked here and there with a transient, billowy 
cloud. She beams on the wind-tossed trees with 
her cheery smile and sends them a kiss with her 
zephyr breath. The gentle rains come a-wooing 
and patter like fairy feet upon the timid buds. 
Spring opens the gates of the ice-bound 
brook and frozen stream, and they gurgle and 
laugh at their glad release. She treads the 
meadows that were bare and brown and a ver¬ 
dant green bedecks the earth. At the touch of 
her petal pink fingers, the hard impenetrable 
earth turns to soft yielding moss. The fern 
unfurls her banner in the dell and hails the lark 
io greet the dawn. The violet looks up and 
nods her head. The blue flag rises from the 
marsh to welcome the red-winged blackbird to 
her home. 
Spring’s persuading voice is heard from the 
distant wood and in echoing answer the stream 
and field and sky sing out, “Awake, arise, be 
glad, rejoice and live, for spring is here!” 
Man is' touched by the wondrous spirit and 
his heart is again made young. He dreams he 
is out on a long tramp through wood and dell. 
He reaches the crest of the highest hill just as 
the sun glances up and gilds the swaying trees 
with light. The path he traveled is half hidden 
by the verdant shrubs. He sees the winding 
mystic stream now blue, now green, running joy¬ 
ously on. He hears the faint but insistent call 
of the brook, and rod in hand he wades knee 
deep into the quiet pool just above the falls. He 
follows the uncertain margin of the brook until 
he reaches the turbulent river, where he plunges 
in for an invigorating dip. He goes paddling- 
in a light canoe, down stream to the long chain 
of lakes and through the ever-varying water¬ 
ways to the little camp in a hermit spot among 
the pungent pines. A chorus of well known 
voices greets him, and he joins his friends at 
their savory breakfast. Hard by, the tent on 
a mossy bank, and in view of the lake and the 
hills, he lies down to rest, giving fretful cares 
to the wind and dreaming of balmy days, the 
glow of sunset, of grass-grown pools and sunny 
meads. 
[These fluffy sentiments were indicted by 
Miss Elsie Schneider, of Cleveland, Ohio.— 
Editor.] 
NESSMUK. 
It is no little gratification to us to. find 
how tremendously popular has been the new 
serial by Nessmuk, now appearing in Forest and 
Stream. Not only has this story created a de¬ 
mand for the magazine, but it also has renewed 
the sale of “Woodcraft” and other of George W. 
Sears’ works. The next issue will be the last 
instalment of “A Contraband Incident,” and in 
all probability the last Nessmuk story ever to 
be published. If you haven’t read it, get a copy 
of April 26, in which the first chapter was 
printed. After reading Chapter L, you won't 
need to be urged to get subsequent numbers. 
You will kick if you can’t get them. Incident¬ 
ally, we have in the hopper a lot of other great 
big features that will interest you. 
“THE LONGEST POLE KNOCKS THE 
PERSIMMON.” 
As usual, last month, Forest and Stream 
carried more advertising than any of the other 
outdoor publications. This was done under nor¬ 
mal conditions without special effort of any kind. 
We append the customary table, compiled by 
Printers’ Ink, showing the total number of agate 
lines of advertising carried by si.x of the sports¬ 
men’s magazines during April. 
Publication. April, 1913. 
1. Forest and Stream. 14,822 
2. Outing Magazine . 12,600 
3. Field & Stream. 12,271 
4. Outers’ Book . 8,960 
5. Outdoor Life . 7-952 
6. Outdoor World . 6,445 
