Fishing Through the Ice. 
The time of the year was mid February. 
For two days .and nights it had been snowing, 
not with the bark and growl of a blizzard, but 
steadily, determinedly, as though the world was 
to be completely and irrecoverably buried. 
Suddenly there was a great stamping and 
tramping upon the front porch and the door 
bell jingled discordantly. “Heavens!” I groan¬ 
ed, looking down at Sir Izaak with commisera¬ 
tion, “somebody sick and that will mean a fif¬ 
teen-mile drive in this loose snow.” But no. 
I heard my wife answer the bell and a hearty, 
out-of-doors laugh filled the lower hall. I 
sprang up with alacrity, and throwing open the 
study door, shouted, “Come right up here, you 
old humbug.” Again that hearty, contagious 
laugh boomed forth, and I laughed in sheer 
sympathy. The stairs creaked for an instant, 
then I had big Dr. B. by the hand—big in body, 
mind and heart. 
“What in the world brought you into this 
neck of the woods at this time of the year? 
He laughed that contagious laugh of his, then 
answered soberly enough: “Well, Brother S., 
I shot ’gaters and caught fish in Florida until 
I was sick of the business; then I began to get 
hungry for snow and ice and storm, so I left 
the wife and children to enjoy the flowers and 
sea breezes and came up here to go ice fishing 
with you. See.” 
“Ice fishing! Suffering smoke, man,” I re¬ 
torted, “after this storm it will be cold enough 
to freeze the tail off a cast iron dog. Anyway, 
I don’t know anything about ice fishing.” 
“Don’t know anything about ice fishing!” he 
repeated in amazement. “Let me tell you then 
that your education has been sadly neglected. 
Don’t know anything about ice fishing! Bless 
you, man, you have missed half the joy of life 
here, and in the world to come I am reason¬ 
ably sure there will not be any fishing through 
the ice.” 
“But, doctor,” I interrupted, “what tools do 
we need? You see I know nothing of the sport, 
if sport it is.” 
“That is just what it is,” my companion re¬ 
plied ; “strenuous, red-blooded sport, but you 
will enjoy it unless you have grown effeminate 
in your old age. As to the tools we will manu¬ 
facture an outfit in the morning, but to-night 
let us visit.” 
And visit we did, as only two college chums 
and hunting cronies can; visited until the house 
grew silent and the lights went out, and then 
retired to live it all over again in our dreams. 
The next morning “all the earth was flat with 
snow, all the air was thick with snow; more 
than this no man could see, as all the world was 
snowing.” After breakfast we repaired to the 
kitchen to manufacture our outfit. 
“The first thing needed,” said the doctor, “is 
some quarter-inch pine boards about eighteen 
inches long.” 
With these at hand we whittled and sawed 
until the kitchen looked like a carpenter shop, 
to the great disgust of the order-loving deity 
who presided in that domain. 
A tip-up such as the doctor made is simply 
a strip of quarter-inch pine board about fifteen 
inches long, two and a half inches wide at one 
end and narrowing to about one inch at the 
other. Six inches from the smaller end he 
bored a half inch hole, having left the tip-up 
slightly larger at that point. Then upon either 
side of the hole he wound two or three wrap¬ 
pings of fine copper wire to give added strength. 
Both ends of the tip-up were notched deeply. 
“You see,” said the doctor, “some fellows are 
satisfied with a willow twig thrust in the snow 
when they are so fortunate as to find snow upon 
the surface of the ice, a somewhat unusual con¬ 
dition of affairs, as the wind usually piles it in 
deep drifts along the shore, but I want a tip- 
up that can be rigged at home. It is more com¬ 
fortable working here than it would be on a 
wind-swept lake. Let’s see, how many tip-ups 
have we made.” 
“Six apiece—twelve,” I answered. 
“Twelve, I think that will be plenty,” he re¬ 
turned. “Now you hunt up some old lines, not 
rotten ones, but lines too short for your reels, 
and I will show you how to rig a tip-up.” 
“I suppose,” he remarked as he measured off 
about twenty feet from the first line I. handed 
him, “that each one of these lines tells its silent 
story of a defeat or victory. (Didn’t they!) Of 
course you dislike to see me cut them (snip, 
snip) so unconcernedly (snip, snip), but active 
service is better for them than honorable retire¬ 
ment. Now we will tie one of these twenty- 
foot lengths to the small end of a tip-up. You 
see the use of the notches in the ends of the 
tip-up? It makes a perfect winder of the bit 
of board and the line will never snarl. A snarl¬ 
ed line when ice fishing is more serious than a 
snarled reel in summer time, for we have the 
element of cold added.” 
When the last length of line was laid upon 
the tip-up he asked for a hook and I handed 
one to him. “Ah,” said he, “I see that you 
still cling to the sneck bend; strange that you— 
a man of average intelligence—persist in using 
such an absurd hook. Look at the thing!” he 
exclaimed, holding it up; “if that is not enough 
to disturb the ghost of Sir Izaak himself I don’t 
know what would.” 
For years the doctor and I have quarreled over 
hooks. I have defended the sneck bend and he 
has been a champion of the Carlisle, and time 
has only increased our prejudice. So when he 
threw down the gauntlet I was quick to take it 
up, and for a time tip-ups and ice fishing were 
forgotten in the heat of battle. The wordy 
struggle terminated, as such struggles always 
terminate, each contestant more than ever con¬ 
vinced that he alone was right. I have heard 
two anglers argue by the hour over some such 
question, until a spectator would have thought 
them the most implacable of enemies, and then 
sit down beneath the shade of a tree to dis¬ 
cuss a lunch in the most amicable manner imag¬ 
inable, only to renew the contest when a favor¬ 
able opportunity offered. 
The argument ended—or rather postponed— 
we returned to our tip-ups and soon had the 
twelve rigged with sinkers and No. I hooks; 
and a rather imposing array they made spread 
out upon the floor. “If we had time,” said the 
doctor, “we would paint them red; as it "is, 
rummage your wife’s rag-bag and purloin any 
bright-colored cloth you may find. You see, un¬ 
less we render them more conspicuous we will 
be unable to tell from a distance whether they 
are ‘up’ or ‘down.’ ” 
I secured some red calico, which was wrapped 
around the larger end of the tip-ups, and the 
doctor pronounced them “ready for business.” 
“Now,” said he, “what about bait?” 
“There are some worms in a box in the cel¬ 
lar,” I replied, “laid up against opening day 
next spring.” 
“The very thing for perch,” he ' answered 
“though I had rather have shiners for. crappie 
and fish of that ilk, and the eye of a fish is not 
to be despised. 
“Are there any pickerel or pike in that lake 
of yours?” 
“Sure,” I answered, ' “and some mighty big 
ones, too. Why, last summer I caught—” 
“Hold on,” laughed my companion, “we don’t 
want any fish yarns now, but take, along thirty 
feet of your strongest line and a 7/0 Carlisle 
hook and I will show you how to set a line for 
large fish. I don’t suppose there is such a thing 
as an ice chisel in town. No? Well, get the 
blacksmith to make one; it is simply an exag¬ 
gerated wood chisel with a hollow shaft large 
enough to hold a stout handle four feet long. 
Have the smith drill a hole in the shaft so that 
the handle can be riveted in.” 
I plowed my way through the deep snow to 
the nearest blacksmith shop and had the smith 
make me an ice chisel, and though he quizzed 
without mercy, I did not tell him what it was 
for. A hanger-on, who occupied a nail keg near 
the forge, said: “My dad used to use some 
such a contrivance as that to cut the ice that 
formed in the cattle’s trough, though what the 
parson expects to use it for is more’n I can 
see, not havin’ any cattle.” 
“Perhaps,” said a grizzled old fellow with the 
cracked cackle of old age, “the parson is going 
to use the implement on the hard heads of some 
of his church members.” 
The morning dawned bright and clear save 
for a few fleecy cirrus clouds—the mare’s tails 
of our weather-wise fathers—the promise of 
wind before noon. 
“What did the thermometer register this 
