Feb. 2, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
171 
for I think young folks better start house¬ 
keeping by themselves, but I was glad when 
he decided to build so close, and her folks was 
glad, too. He did think for a spell of goin’ 
down .onto the river and startin’ in business with 
a man he knows there, but he give it up. 
“Couple of nice dogs you’ve got there,” Mr. 
Cushman went on. as he reached out to pat 
Terry, who seemed rather more disposed than 
usual to form a new acquaintance, but was 
crowded out of the expected caress'by jealous 
Lassie. “You don’t want to let them get across 
the big creek, for we’ve been having a real time 
up our way with mad dogs, and there are orders 
out to shoot every stray dog. We’ve got old 
Shep tied up; couldn't get along very well with¬ 
out him. That setter pup ought to be up to 0111- 
house this fall; there’s lots of birds.” 
"Do you hunt much?” Robert asked, begin¬ 
ning to take an interest in this animate son of 
Tice Teneyck. 
“Oh, not much; when we do we usually go 
into some one else’s woods. You see, we travel 
back and forth so much through our own timber 
—because we only just cut what trees are past 
growing any better, and have to look all over 
the mountains to find them—that we get ac¬ 
quainted with most all the broods of birds, and 
kinder hate to kill them, just as quick as they 
are grown up. I never cared quite so much 
about a shotgun, anyway, as I do a rifle; guess 
that’s, because I used to chase bears and foxes 
over these mountains when I was a young man. 
Late years I don’t think I can see to shoot quite 
so well as I did once; but I made a pretty good 
shot last week. Stood in the woodshed door 
and killed a crow that was pulling up corn way 
down on the flat. Didn’t think I could more 
than scare him away. But, sir, he lopped right 
over and never stirred a feather. John said he 
guessed my eyes would do for a spell yet.” 
Robert suggested that after dinner we have 
some target practice. 
“You couldn’t suggest anything that would 
suit me better,” Mr. Cushman replied, “I don’t 
suppose I d stand much chance with you young 
men, but I should enjoy it just as well as I ever 
did, and I’d like to try your guns.” 
So after we had done our best getting up a 
good dinner, we shot until it was pretty well 
established that Mr. Cushman’s eyes and nerves 
were as good as any in the party. The talk 
turned to the penetrating power of guns, and 
using some dry hemlock timbers, we tested ours 
• until one of the bullets went through several 
thicknesses and into a solid knot. Probing to 
see how far it had gone did not bring very sat¬ 
isfactory results, and Mr. Cushman, picking up 
the dull camp ax, said: 
“Let's cut it out. I want to see how far it 
could go into anything as hard as that.” 
Using the ax with one hand, he sliced off 
that knot, seemingly with as little effort as 
one might slice an apple, while we looked on 
with admiration. 
When with visiting, eating and shooting the 
afternoon was well spent. Mr. Cushman said: 
“Now, boys, I must be going. I can’t re¬ 
member when I have enjoyed a day as well as 
I have this, and I’d like to stay to supper, but I 
promised mother and the girls that I would go 
to the social with them, and it’s a long drive 
up home.” 
“I dislike,” said Henry, as he prepared for 
bed that evening, “to interfere with any of the 
time-honored customs of this camp, but I can 
see, and I think the rest of you can if you look 
at me, that the practice of tearing gun-wipers 
from the tail of my nightshirt has already been 
carried too far.” 
The cause of Henry’s observation was this: 
The first time we used our new guns, he had 
not been able to find any cloth for wipers which 
just suited him. until his eyes fell upon his cot¬ 
ton-flannel nightshirt. Its half-worn condition 
made it just about flexible enough, and he tore 
a small bit from the back breadth, pronouncing 
it excellent for the purpose. Robert and I had 
guns to wipe, so we took a litle more. From 
that beginning it developed into a regular habit, 
so that every session of target shooting was 
followed by more or less curtailment of that 
back breadth. The levy which had been made 
upon it during that afternoon had left it well 
above the knees and with a very uneven edge. 
As we surveyed the rather striking picture which 
he made attired in this garment, Jim said: 
“There is one good thing about it, anyway, 
Henry; you can tell which is fore and aft of 
that rig without waiting until you get into it and 
begin to feel for the buttons.” 
“Yes,” Henry replied, “I can tell where the 
‘fore’ is all right, and part of the ‘aft,’ but unless 
these depredations are stopped, the buttons will 
soon be all that’s left.” 
“Whatever disease it is that affects it seems 
to be spreading pretty fast,” Robert remarked. 
“Why don’t you pencil it, as the doctors used 
to erysipelas, and see if you can’t stop it?” 
"I will,” said Henry, and pulling the back 
around where the front ought to be, he marked 
across it with a bit of charcoal. 
“Now, that’s the dead line,” he continued, 
“and no more fishing for gun-wipers is allowed 
above it.” 
Uncle Nick’s eyes twinkled as he said: 
“I wouldn’t make so much fuss about it, any¬ 
way, for I guess it’s about on its last legs.” 
“The way you fellows abuse the back of my 
nightshirt,” said Henry, “makes me think of 
Tim Morris and John Hughston. Tim lived 
next to us when I was a boy, and he and I were 
about the same age. He was smarter than a 
streak of chain lightning, but he hated to work 
more than any boy I ever saw. He kept the 
whole neighborhood laughing at the tricks he’d 
play to get rid o'f doing anything. His father 
used to spend half his time trying to keep Tim 
straight and the other half being discouraged 
about him. One day he set Tim planting corn 
and sent John Hughston to work with him. 
John was about as big as an ox and almost as 
good-natured, but he was only half witted. He 
would work all right at anything he knew 
enough to do, but that wasn’t many things. 
They hadn’t more than started planting before 
Tim began to figure out some way of getting 
out *of it. I don’t know how he did it, but he 
persuaded John that it would be the easiest and 
quickest way to get the field planted if he 
should climb on John’s back and drop the corn 
from there while John covered it with .his hoe. 
He said he could count the kernels faster, and 
would keep the sun off John’s back. So -he 
climbed up, and rode there all the forenoon 
until John was about tuckered out. Then Tim’s 
father found them and cut a limb from a hickory 
tree, allowing he’d take a hand in the shading 
business himself. Tim told me afterward that 
it didn’t hardly pay, because he said his father 
happened to get hold of a pretty knotty stick.” 
On the following morning, I was obliged to 
start for New York to look after business mat¬ 
ters. They had to be very important to drag 
me out of the woods, and even so might not 
have succeeded only for the fact that the trip 
would last but a day and a night. It was warm 
at camp, but not enough so to be uncomfort¬ 
able until I was suitably dressed for the journey. 
What a miserable thing a starched collar is 
anyway! 
As we dropped down out of the mountains 
and the train began to run along under the 
smothering ledges on the west bank of the 
Hudson, people mopped their brows, and look¬ 
ing at each other remarked, “This is going to 
be a hot one.” The nauseating gas of the tun¬ 
nels lingered longer than usual in the cars. The 
black cinders coming through every open win¬ 
dow clung to the flesh. The passengers looked 
sticky, grimy and ill-tempered. At Weehawken, 
under the low-roofed sheds of the station, the 
air was stifling. The train poured out its 
human load like a stream onto the decks of the 
ferry, and there it moved restlessly about as the 
boat plowed its way through the floating rub¬ 
bish of the foul waters, among the shipping and 
the tooting, toward the eastern shore. 
As she rubbed along the greasy sides of the 
slip and became enveloped in the filthy odors, 
the passengers flocked to the forward deck and 
stood impatiently, as if marking time until the 
folded gates should release them. Husky men 
hooked the boat, and set the windlass clanking 
until the cables creaked and groaned under the 
strain. The gang-planks fell with a thud, and at 
the call of “hands off,” the gates chugged back. 
The crowd rushed forward as if drawn by some 
unseen force, and in a minute the oven-like city 
had swallowed it up. Although it was not yet 
noon, the signs of torturing heat were every¬ 
where present. I was told that this was the 
fourth day of steadily increasing heat, and that 
the nights had been sleepless. 
One did not need to be told. Stored heat 
radiated from every brick and every stone. The 
air was thick with the odor of melting asphalt. 
1 he horses dropped their heads and staggered as 
they moved lifelessly along under the scorching 
sun. The depressing sound of the ambulance 
gongs was ominously perpetual. The sunny 
sides of the streets were deserted while the 
shaded ones were as proportionately congested 
by people w'ith anxious flushed faces. Busy 
corners were blocked by exhausted horses fall¬ 
ing in the streets. Groups of ever-curious 
people would swarm around a certain spot and 
then break open at a point so that men could 
be seen carrying some heavy burden toward the 
nearest drug store. 
As the day wore on the tell-tale mercury rose 
higher and higher. With every newly posted 
bulletin the number of those who had succumbed 
mounted up until it reached and passed the 
figures of the mercury. The sun grew fiercer 
and became a brazen red. In the bottom of 
the canon-like streets men and animals fairly 
broiled. Then began the rush to leave the city. 
Every car and every boat which would take men 
out of that furnace was crowded to its utmost 
with half-exhausted humanity. 
I walked through the lower East Side, and 
there saw children fighting like tigers over the 
bits of broken ice which fell from the wagons, 
while others ran after the driver, pleading for 
“just a little piece.” Wretched looking mothers 
swayed naked heat-sored babies back and forth 
in their arms that they might continue to 
breathe. Filthy children sprawled over the side¬ 
walks and swarmed upon the fire escapes. Be¬ 
sotted, ugly looking men growled and cursed 
as they pushed their way through the squirming 
mass of wretchedness, or else sullen and stupid, 
lounged upon boxes and barrels with their heads 
down. As I half staggered through the sicken¬ 
ing sights and the crazing heat a momentary 
vision of the camp flashed through my mind. 
Could two spots on one earth be so different? 
After I had gone uptown to my hotel and 
sweltered through dinner, I walked a few blocks 
on one of the avenues. Have you noticed that 
here, in the summer, the sun sets at the end of 
each street? That night it was so red, so 
threateningly hot, that I felt there must be many 
suns, and a new one watched to search me from 
the west at every crossing. And so the sun 
went down untempered by a feather of cloud, 
and its last fierce glance was a threat for the 
morrow to that breathless city. 
It was a feverish bed which I had that night, 
with no smell of pine or hemlock about it. In 
the morning when the fiery orb began to climb 
up among the gas-tanks and smoke-stacks along 
the East River, showing no sign of mercy, I 
beat an early retreat, and the first train to 
Unasego found me ready and waiting. As I 
walked into camp, grimy with the dust of the 
cars, and shedding my coat and collar as I went, 
I thought that if there was a cooler, more com¬ 
fortable looking spot, I had never seen it. 
Winfield T. Sherwood. 
[to be continued.] 
The Lost Monster. 
I have tasted many pleasures 
And have supped on sorrow, too. 
And my sky has oft been clouded 
And the clouds lacked silver hue; 
But never in life’s journey 
Has my joy with pain been crossed, 
As with my first experience 
Of a salmon hooked and lost. 
Ye gods! he was a whopper 
As I struck him in the pool, 
When he skiddoo’d with my leader 
I felt and looked a fool. 
They said he was a half-starved slink 
And not worth the trouble cost, 
But I’d swear he’d weigh full twenty pounds, 
That first salmon I had lost. 
Walton, Jr. 
