678 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 4, 1911. 
Reminiscences 
By FRANK G. HARRIS 
The sportsman who came in unexpectedly to¬ 
ward the end of our trip was exceedingly anxious 
to catch a large trout, so we gave him the front 
chair in the boat. We came to a place in the 
river where the current had worn quite a deep 
passage about four feet wide at the margin of 
the stream, at the outside of which there was a 
water-soaked tree trunk about a foot in dia¬ 
meter lying lengthwise, and as we cast into it, 
a large fish made a rush for the fly, but missed 
it. We backed further away and he cast again, 
getting a smaller fish, and the large one fol¬ 
lowed it, so that a fair sight of him was had. 
Our sportsman began to ejaculate and get ex¬ 
cited, and said that he must get that fish. He 
cast several times without result, and then, after 
giving the pool a rest, changed his fly to a red 
dragon in place of the doctor. At the first cast 
the large fish took it, and the windfall made our 
sportsman afraid that he would get snagged upon 
it or that the fish would get behind it or under 
it, as it was only about eighteen inches below 
the surface. The river was shallow and about 
thirty feet wide, so he gave the fish the butt 
of his four-ounce rod, and reeling in too much 
line, hauled the trout over the windfall and 
into water about two feet deep. In his effort 
to get him safely away from the snag, he brought 
him around the bow of the boat and between the 
boat and the sandy beach of the river opposite 
the hole, out of which the fish had been taken, 
and I was prepared to land him in the landing 
net, but could not reach him. As the line was 
too short, he could not be brought within reach, 
and in the effort to get him nearer, he struck 
the sandy bottom where it was shallow, and the 
hook came away. We thought that the leader 
had broken, but it was intact. 
When the fish was released, he, as well as our 
sportsman, was quite exhausted, and the fish 
staid quietly where he was when the hook pulled 
out, it seemed for minutes, but it was probably 
for seconds. We at once tried to reach him 
with the net, but could not quite do it. The cur¬ 
rent, which is swift, soon began to move him, 
a three-pounder, down stream, and I handed the 
landing net to the unfortunate sportsman, and 
the guide pushed the boat down stream after the 
fish. He soon began to swim slowly, but always 
out of reach, and we followed him down stream 
about twenty-five feet, when he came to himself 
and began to swim slowly back up stream, but 
always out of reach, to get back to his lair. The 
current seemed very much in favor of the fish, 
and obstinately seemed to carry the fish one way 
and the boat the opposite way. Our sportsman 
was now standing up, wild with excitement, giv¬ 
ing orders like an admiral at the Battle of Santi¬ 
ago, but the fish reached the hole about six inches 
ahead of the landing net. Our sportsman looked 
as though he had lost something about as precious 
as his new and only baby that he left to join 
us for a couple of weeks in the woods. We landed 
for lunch, and for about an hour our friend, 
looking as though he was about to have a seri¬ 
ous illness, repeatedly said to me: “William, that 
is sad. Why didn’t I jump out and grab him?” 
And so with sadness at times and pleasure on 
many more occasions, we spent our annual seven 
weeks in the woods and upon a trout stream. 
All the fish laivs of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laivs in Brief. See adv. 
R EADER, have you ever grown reminiscent? 
When your hair has grown gray, and you 
have followed the trail above the timber 
line, over the summit, and are ready for the 
home stretch, have you ever gone back in memory 
to your childhood or boyhood days and lived 
them over again ? These may be the “reveries 
of a bachelor” or of someone else, but they doubt¬ 
less recall the very best days of life; days free 
from any deep sorrow or trouble, and when every 
day was a day of sunshine and every night 
brought sweet dreams and rest. 
A few years ago, as I lay in my berth in a 
sleeper and the train was climbing the western 
slope of the Rockies, the stopping of the train 
wakened me, and I heard the sound of a cow¬ 
bell. Since my boyhood days I had heard the 
sound of many cowbells in my own and other 
lands, but none of them had the exact tone or 
awakened the memories as did that one high up 
in the Rockies. It carried me back many years 
to my childhood days, when I as a boy in a Penn¬ 
sylvania hamlet hunted our old red cow, Cherry, 
who carried a brass bell with the exact sound 
and tone of the bell I heard that night. I could 
not sleep; indeed, I did not want to, for my 
memory carried me back through all the years, 
and I lived over again the days when I hunted 
the cow and gathered wild flowers and bouquets 
for the dear woman who took the place of a 
sainted mother who left me long before I was 
old enough to really know and appreciate her; 
back to the days when I made the johnny-jump- 
ups fight imaginary battles until all their heads 
were jerked off. Long years before I ever heard 
of a botany I could call by its common name 
every flower that I met in my rambles after old 
Cherry, or along Blue Run after trout, or Clear¬ 
field Creek for sunfish, fallfish or the more gamy 
pike. In these same rambles I could call by its 
common name every bird I met, from the tiny 
hummingbird to the tall heron or the blood¬ 
thirsty hawk. 
In later years when, as college sophomore, I 
followed our old professor, Dr. Thomas C. 
Porter, in his botanical and zoological excur¬ 
sions, I learned other and more scientific names 
for my wild flowers and birds, and by him was 
taught to “name the birds without a gun, and 
love the wild rose and leave it to bloom on its 
stalk.” And yet to-day I prefer to call my wild 
friends by their old names I learned in the long 
ago. 
I cannot account for my love of nature—ever 
since I was a child and my disposition to seek 
the woods and the streams, where I never grow 
lonely and time never hangs heavily on my hands 
—unless I inherited it from my father, who spent 
his earlier years on the moors of Scotland, and 
that my mother was an ardent lover of nature. 
I pity the man who loves not nature in all her 
moods. One of the companions of my earlier 
years, with whom I sometimes fished and hunted, 
one of the best lawyers of his day, was such a 
man. He could catch trout fairly well, because 
there were lots of them, and they were hungry, 
but as hunter he was an utter failure. He never 
killed anything, though the woods were full of 
game, and though his early life was spent in the 
forest, he did not know the difference between 
a deer track and a fox track. 
This love of nature and the days spent along 
the lakes and streams of my own State and in 
the great North Woods has shaped and molded, 
though unconsciously, much of my life. It has 
prompted me to answer the “call of the wild,” 
and in many ways and in many lands has led me 
into the enjoyment of the very best days of my 
life. It has brought me in touch with many 
kindred spirits who have become my very best 
and truest friends. It has kept my eye clear, my 
step firm, and when these shall fail, I shall live 
over again the memories of other years. 
But time has worked many changes since I, 
as a boy, hunted old Cherry and made friends 
with the birds and the flowers. The vast forests 
that covered a great portion of our State, and 
were the home of the elk, the deer, the bear, 
the wolf, the wild turkey, the grouse and the 
squirrels and many other animals that furnished 
sport for the hunter and food for the early 
settlers, have, with the forests, forever vanished. 
With the forests have gone many of our very 
best streams that furnished thousands of trout 
and other game fish for the sportsman. The coal 
mines, the tanneries, the paper mills have done 
their deadly work, and no amount of appropria¬ 
tions or legislation on the part of the State will 
ever restore them to their former condition. I 
recall the days when I was a boy of twelve, when 
Dave Bear, Bill Courtney and Bill Luther were, 
to my mind, ideal hunters. Those were the days 
when the muzzleloader, in the hands of such 
men as Bear, Luther, Courtney and other old- 
time sportsmen, was the most dead'y arm in the 
world. And those were the days of the wild or 
passenger pigeon. What genuine sport they fur¬ 
nished me with my old musket! During the 
autumn they gathered in great flocks on the buck¬ 
wheat fields and on the white oaks and beeches 
prior to going south. Twenty years ago, while 
hunting deer in the Green Woods in the Alle- 
ganies, I killed the last one I ever saw. 
Fred Mather, in his “Men I Have Fished 
With,” speaks of skittering for pike with his 
cousins in Michigan. I learned that art fifty 
years ago. We had no fancy fishing tackle or 
split bamboo rods, but cut our own poles in a 
birch thicket, peeled and dried them, and with 
a cotton line and a pair of hooks that cost us 
a “levy” at Cooper’s store, we had the finest 
sport in the world on Clearfield Creek and the 
Susquehanna. 
When I was fourteen I began to take lessons 
in sportsmanship under George Patchin, a splen¬ 
did fellow who lived near my new home on the 
west branch of the Susquehanna. He taught me 
to trap minks, otters and wildcats, and taught 
me some new tricks in fishing. One autumn day 
George invited me to accompany him to the 
Burnside dam for pike. He was a full grown 
man and I was a boy, and as a matter of cour¬ 
tesy he went ahead while I followed behind and 
got what he left. But George did not know that 
I had taken lessons in pike fishing under the 
Bear boys long before I became his pupil. In 
