10 36 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[JUNE 30, 1906. 



(ON No ae 
there, and so they were seldom visited by any 
one but poachers, and these thronged the whole 
river, principally the settlers along its banks, and 
thus it has come about. 
My happiest angling memories cluster around 
the southwest. There I killed my first salmon 
and there my last! There I met the Primes, 
father and son; the Habershams, of Georgia; the 
Abbotts and Higginsons, of Boston; Governors 
Head and Gordon, General Dashwood and Major 
Grant, Captains Power and Coventry, of the 15th; 
Thad. Norris and Dr. Wood, Jim Lonergan, 
Charlie Couldock, and poor old Jim Chubb, not 
one of whom is now living. Dashwood died last 
June; Major Grant some eight or ten years ago. 
If you write anything about ‘the river, you cannot 
praise it too highly, nor can you exaggerate its 
beautiful scenery, its ideal pools, nor the abund- 
ance of salmon that used to frequent them. Alas! 
Ichabod, Ichabod!! VENNING.” 
Louis Silcox Goes Fishing. 
From the New York Evening Post. 
Lewis Silcox, farmer, of Bluff Springs, forty- 
four miles north of Pensacola in Stanley 
County. Fla., after having been shanghaied and 
forced to turn sailor fourteen months ago, found 
a haven to-day at the American Seamen’s. Friend 
Society, No. 74 Wall street, and expressed his 
thanks with fervor when he learned that’ he was 
to be sent back to the farm and mother. 
“T expect,” he said, emphasizing the pronoun 
in true Florida fashion, “that I sure am about the 
gladdest man to set foot on American soil that 
you-all ever seen.” 
Then he took stock of his surroundings and 
was moved to point a moral. 
“And to think this yere thing wouldn’t never 
have happened if only I’d remembered that 
promise I sure made to my old mother. Yes’s, 
when my father up and died ’way back so long 
ago I done clear forget the year, I takes a look 
at ma, and she sure was too derned pretty for 
any widder woman. So I reckoned to have 
some conversation with her, and I sure did. 
“*Ma,’ I says, ‘you’re too dern good-lookin’.’ 
“Why, what does you-all mean?’ she says; 
but she don’t show like she’s mad to speak on. 
***T means,’ I says, ‘that 1 sees a stepfather 
in this yere house right smart, ef something 
ain’t done. Now, see yere, ma, I ain’t agoin’ to 
have no over-ridin’ young stepfather turning 
this yere house and this yere farm upside down, 


and treatin’ me like I was no-account white 
trash. This yere thing’s got to stop right 
stidden before it begins,’ I says. 
“‘Now, ef you-all ‘ll promise me solemn not 
to set up with any other fellow old or young in 
this yere township, I sure will promise never to 
leave you-all, but to stay right yere and work 
for you-all until one or the other on us catches 
up to dad,’ I says. 
“She promised, and she sure kept her promise, 
but you-all can jest reckon that I broke mine, 
and I expect I was punished right smart. 
“Tt was this-a-way. In the middle of April, 
1905, I went down to ’Cola to spend a few 
days with some friends and buy me a new pair 
of reins for the buggy. Soon ’s I steps off at 
the de-pot, a feller they calls a runner grabs my 
arm. 
““Vou-all would look healthier for a one 
trip on a fishin’ boat,’ he says. 
**Maybe,’ I says, ‘but I ain’t troublin’ none ef 
I don’t get it, I «says. 
“‘Not a run ‘long the coast, no further nor 
Mobile, with $25 a month and four suits of 
clothes?’ he says. 
“That sure did sound good, and I done set 
right down there on the de-pot platform to 
think it over. .But he says, ‘Come up to the 
boardin’. house and. see the captain,’ he says, 
‘ard»maybe he’ll offer you more’n that,’ he ‘says. 
“Reckoned ’tweren’t "going to do no great 
harm nohow, so I went rightsalong, He*was a 
right agreeable feller, this yerer runtiet’man; for 
when we got to the boarding house and the cap- 
tain wasn’t there, he bought lots to drink. But 
I ain’t sech a particular kind of fool that Floridy 
*d be likely to disown me, and I seen he was 
a-trying to get me drunk, so I jest stayed plumb 
sober. 
“Anyways, he sure bought a fine supper. But 
he done watch close on me and two young 
fellers he had at the boarding house. Never let 
his eyes off’n us all night. In the mornin’ he 
says for us to come down to the wharf and see 
the captain. We gets into a row-boat and first 
thing I know I’m out in mid-stream on the fur- 
master Dhwar Jefley, Captain Jefley. The mate 
he says ther’s a paper for me to sign, and [ 
sure signed it, but I told ’em I wanted to ex- 
plain to the captain. 
“Didn’t see the captain none until the next 
day, when we had hoisted anchor and was on 
our way to Antwerp. Then the captain he sees. 
me and he says, “Go aloft and hoist sail,’ he 
says. 

AT THE SEVENTH GRA) 
““Fixcuse me, captain, I says, ‘but I sure never 
did hoist a sail in my life.’ 
‘Damn it,’ he says, ‘do they call you a first- 
class sailor?” he says. 
“ “Ef they do,’ I says, 
heap out of my name.’ 
“T never seen land after the next day for two 
months, when we entered the England Channel, 
and day after that we anchored at Antwerp and 
discharged our cargo of lumber. These yere 
deal planks was the only fish in our hold. 
“Captain, he’s right smart at figgers. He says 
ef he allows me half-pay, me not being a first- 
class sailor, and then takes out $16 for clothes, 
T’ll have five francs for myself in foreign money. 
“Wasn’t quite five francs, he reckoned, but 
when he was settlin’ with me in the Swedish 
consul’s office, the consul he up and says, ‘Give 
him the five francs,’ he says, ‘he needs it.’ 
“Five francs don’t pay board very long in 
Antwerp; so I went to the Workman’s Home, 
where I spent two or’three months. Then I 
was turned over to the Police Church Home, 
where they kept me for eight days, and then 
they got passage to London for me and shipped 
me over there to try my luck with three francs 
that they gave me. 
“Were you-all ever in London? They sure do 
take less notice of you in that city than in any 
other town I know. I had got off at London 
Bridge, and pretty soon I met a policeman and 
told him my story. 
“Well, he says, ‘you can’t expect to draw 
many dividends on three frances,’ he says. ‘You 
had better eat,’ he says, ‘and then come back 
here and we'll talk things over.’. I went and had 
a meal, but I never got back. Lost my way and 
wandered all over London for three days with 
nothin’ to eat, lookin’ for that policeman. I sure 
was hungry those days. . 
“Then J got a few pennies and started to walk 
to Bristol, where someone had told me there 
were lots of sailing vessels on which I could get 
to America. I was three weeks on the road, 
and had another right hard time when I done 
went without food for three days.” 
Disappointed in his quest, Silcox started on 
another long tramp. At Worcester, he obtained 
one or two odd jobs, and he remained in the 
city for a month. At the end of that time, his 
case was called to the attention of Capt. Hurry, 
of the Worcester Police Court Mission, who 
opened correspondence with the sheriff of Pen- 
sacola in regard to the case. 
After several letters had been excienaed, 
‘they call me a whole 
