Hopkin's pond and other sketches

t

ONE OF THEM, IN HIS HURRY TO BE IN THE WORLD WITH US, RAN ABOUT AS
AS SOON AS HIS LEGS PROTRUDED, CARRYING THE BROKEN SHELL UPON HIS BACK."

BY

ROBERT T. MORRIS

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND

Ube-fmicfeerbocfcer press
1896

HOPKINS'S POND

AND

/ /

OTHER SKETCHES

COPYRIGHT, 1896
BY

ROBERT T. MORRIS

fmicfeerbocfeer press, t\ew

DEDICATED TO
THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED FATHER

LUZON B. MORRIS

WHO ENJOYED EVERYTHING THAT HIS
CHILDREN ENJOYED

PREFACE.

WHEN these sketches were first
published, the author had no
more thought of preserving them in book
form, than the brown thrush thinks of re-
cording the things that he says to his
mate from the bending tip-top of a white
birch in June. They were penned in
spare moments to please the little coterie
of friends who gather about my open fire-
place in the long winter evenings, where
the largest bass fails to escape from the
hook, and where the bear makes his most
furious onslaught. There was a pleasure
also in fixing certain thoughts in definite
form so that when fatigued with work and
with city surroundings I could turn to an
old paper and find that I really had
thought of nice things once.

Then again there was a feeling that the

vj Preface.

pappus of the pen might float a tiny bit
of germ to some barren office desk, where
it would spring into fresh memories for
some lover of richer fields, who was
chained to the desk.

Many sketches which were published
anonymously and in various places have
been trimmed out of mind by the sickle of
the Reaper, and I do not know where to
look for them to-day, but the Editor of
Forest and Stream has found in his files
a number of contributions that were pub-
lished over my name, or over the nom de
plume of Mark West, which was adopted
from the familiar call of New England
sea-shooters. The story from the sandy
end of a Connecticut township was pub-
lished in The Rider and Driver.

CONTENTS.

HOPKINS'S POND ....
BONASA UMBELLUS, REX .
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE EDDY .
WATCHING THE BRANT GROW BIG
THE LAIR OF SOMETHING STRIPED

SUCKER DAYS

THE EVENING OF AUGUST i, 1895
IN THE SANDY END OF A CONNECTICUT
TOWNSHIP ......

A DAY WITH THE GROUSE ....

THE NEPIGON AND SAGUENAY RIVERS
THE NUMBER NINE AS A TALE VARNISHER,
EN KLAPJAGT PAA DANSKE FJELDE .
ONE DEER .... .

A BIT OF GROUSE-HUNTER'S LORE
TROUT IN A THUNDER-STORM

PAGE

I

40
53
7i
78
89

118

128
141

176

185
199

viii Contents.

PAGE

COOT SHOOTING IN NEW ENGLAND . . 204
RUFFED GROUSE AMONG THE GRAPE-VINES . 207
WING SHOOTING VERSUS GROUND SHOOTING 212
MY WHITE VIOLET — POETRY . .218

AN EASTER CROCUS— POETRY . .219

THE EMPTY KENNEL — POETRY . .220

THE OLD-SQUAW — POETRY . .224

WHAT I FOUND IN THE HUNTING-COAT

POCKET — POETRY . . . 226

HOPKINS'S POND
AND OTHER SKETCHES

HOPKINS'S POND.

ECHO hiding up among the rocks
quietly reproved the boy who
yelled too loudly when he pulled the
croaking bullhead out of the warm pond
water, and with a low, forbearing voice
showed with nice modulation how the
sound of joy ought to be made next time.
It was a quiet pond, without a single
bad trait, excepting that it smelled rather
pondy in summer when the water was low,
but that is nothing to a boy. Its tran-
quillity was in keeping with the tranquil
farms that extended part way around it,
but it nevertheless had certain subdued
sounds of its own, for in the spring the
honest toad sat in a leaky bog and trilled
a serenade to his love who was largely
immersed in the cool water below. Little
frogs chuckled and big frogs rumbled in

2 Hopkins's Pond.

bass, while the old mill wheel, which la-
bored irregularly, mingled its thumpings
with the sound of water plunging over the
low wooden dam. Such sounds were very
different, though, from the rattle and
bang of a noisy engine and the screech of
a steam saw that one is in danger of hear-
ing nowadays if he is not judicious about
his selection of ponds. We never heard
anything of that sort about old-fashioned
Hopkins's Pond, which was very dear to
the heart of the boy, and very dreadful in
the mind of his mother, who imagined
that its eager depths were always yawning
for her dirty little darling, who had safely
outgrown the cistern and the well.

As a matter of fact, it was about as good
a pond as one could imagine, though it
really was rather deep, down by the flume
where the water silently moved under-
ground in a slow, portentous current, and
the sticks and rusty bait boxes that we
boys threw in there disappeared forever.
If such things went as completely out of
sight in the bonfire in the garden it was
a different matter. When the agrostis

Hopkins's Pond. 3

ghosts and dead leaves had all been raked
out from under the currant bushes and
piled upon the heap of trimmings from
the grapevines and apple trees, a cloud
of crackling smoke rolled up into the
balmy spring air that was more fitted to
receive the bluebird's song, and into the
fire we threw various garden rakings : a
tail from a wornout buffalo-robe, and a
heavy dried paint-pot, a chicken's foot, a
recently unearthed spool that little sister
begged us to spare for her wagon, a piece
of bagging with plaster on it, the remnant
of a hoop-skirt, an old tow chignon that
the pup had dragged over from the minis-
ter's yard, a sole from grandfather's boot,
the wooden cover of a Webster's spelling
book, a cabbage stalk with roots deeply
entwined in a hunk of dirt, a mouldy corn-
cob, a rusty screw, and a good new clothes-
pin if nobody was looking. We watched
the disappearance of these things in the
fire with great glee, and there was none of
the sober feeling that came over us when
the sticks and bait boxes went out of sight
in the flume.

4 Hopkins's Pond.

A large part of the pond was spread
with lilypads which shaded the reticulated
pickerel, and round about the margins
amphibious arrow-weeds lifted themselves
up high enough to whisper to the com-
panionable willows which leaned over the
water as far as they dared, and which
canopied the nest of the wood-thrush when
she pressed her warm spotted breast over
the satin-lined blue eggs that held hours
and hours of coming song.

Twittering swallows slid in graceful
curves over the surface of the pond,
dipped their bills into the water as they
flew, circled out over the hayfield and
back to the pond again as lightly as mere
allusive emblems of flight. Gaudy oper-
cled sunfish built round nests in the yel-
low sand where the quawk waded with his
phosphorescent breast lantern at night,
and gauzy winged dragon-flies no heavier
than mid-day air balanced upon the tip-
piest tips of the sedges. Archippus and
argynnis butterflies drifted about over the
clustered asclepias on the bank and the
colias fleet luffed on the half-dried mud.

Hopkins's Pond. 5

In the autumn the muskrats built cosy
houses of calamus and cattail at the
head of the pond, and one could find a
raccoon track under the button bushes if
he knew just where to pull the branches
aside to look for it. Wood-ducks floated
among fallen leaves in the shallow cove
where sere and brown grasses hung their
loads of rich nutritious seeds within easy
reach, and sometimes a black duck spent
two or three days among the frost-killed
weeds on the low islands where splashy
waves and autumn rains had made good
woodcock ground under the alders. Katy-
dids and tree crickets katydided in the
venerable and respected maple tree, while
the disbanded chorus of hylas piped with
solitary voices in the woods which had
been littered by a departing season. The
old rickety bridge lay slanting upon its
abutments. Its beams had been obliged
to yield a little in the spring freshet when
the ice had jammed against them. The
chestnut planking of the bridge was
warped, and where horses' feet had punc-
tured the rotting boards pine slabs were

6 Hopkins's Pond.

nailed as a provision against accident
and unwise expenditure. Hay seed that
had sifted down from August loads
sprouted in the dust on the girders, and it
rattled down into the water when we
turned up a plank in order to slyly poke
a copper wire noose in front of the un-
suspicious white-nosed suckers as they
patiently worked from rock to rock along
the bottom under the fancied protection
of the bridge.

When winter came over the pond the
hemlocks sighed very often, for they loved
rivalry with other trees in foliage, and the
blue jays went to them to offer sympathy.
Green and blue added a bright bit of color
to the white landscape and pursuaded the
distant winter sky to come nearer. Soft-
footed rabbits carelessly left whole rows
of rabbit tracks in the snow where black-
berry briers offered tempting nipping, and
the thick rushes were as full of quail
tracks as an egg is full of meat. In the
cold, still winter midnight, when the be-
lated traveller blew his frosted finger-tips
and trudged noiselessly along through the

Hopkins's Pond. 7

fluffy snow in the lonely pond road, al-
lowing superstition to keep one eye on
the lookout, the muffled quunk, quunk,
quunk, of uncaused ice sounds suddenly
admonished him to take longer steps and
to get some kind of a door behind him.

There was nothing mysterious about the
pond in the daytime, and it was great fun
to kick a stone out of the frozen ground
and send it bounding across the ice ; to
hear the musical whunk, whenk, whink,
ink, inkle, inkle, inkle, inkle, until the
stone bounced into the bushes on the
further bank. How the ice did ring to
the clipping skate strokes when we young-
sters, red-mittened and with flying tippet
ends, played shinny in the moonlight until
the driftwood fire burned low and we real-
ized that we had been out three hours
later than the time when we had pro-
mised to be at home, where our good
parents were consoling themselves with
the thought that we always had come
home previously. No matter how frosty
the night, or how keenly the wind blew,
we knew nothing of that while the fun

8 Hopkins's Pond.

lasted, but it began to feel chilly when
Susie had chosen to go home with Dave,
and it became shivery when Ed had been
accepted as escort for Nellie. Pretty
brown-eyed Nellie with warm home-
knitted woollen stockings and glowing
cheeks, her mirthful eyes shining out
through a loosened lock of dark hair
under her fur-lined hood. We knew that
Ed would bashfully steal a cold-nosed,
hurried kiss at the gate, and that Nellie
would hit him with her skates, but not
very hard — not as hard as we would have
done it. We knew what would happen
because Ed had looked sheepish for a
whole week after he had gone home with
Nellie the last time, but we told each
other that we did n't care if Nellie did
like Ed the best. We did n't care a
darn bit, 'cos he wa'n't nobody nohow.
Could n't set rabbit twitch-ups, nor snare
suckers, nor play mibs for fair, and he only
knew 'rithmetic and school things. A
feller like that wa'n't no good and nobody
'ceptin' the teacher and Nellie liked him.
How little did we realize in those early

Hopkins's Pond. 9

days that there was something green-eyed
as well as something brown-eyed out for
an outing when the weather was right ;
but boys who are supposed to have no
troubles at all are all full of them, because
they have the emotions of older folks with-
out the training to discover the locality
of a thorn. Many are their troubles which
make a lasting impression through life.

One of us boys was so enthusiastic
about trapping muskrats that he got up at
four o'clock every morning all through the
winter and tramped miles along the streams
before breakfast, watching the habits of
the warmer-coated denizens of the brook,
hunting for their holes under the banks
and the paths where they came up into
the meadow for grass. A heap of unio
shells had for him a meaning. A burrow
under the snow to a certain apple tree
showed which frozen apples the muskrats
liked best. A soggy, decayed log in the
water always carried a definite evidence
of their fondness for that spot, and the
boy knew that his trap would be sprung
and the sweet apple pulled from its stick

io Hopkins's Pond.

when he went to that log in the morning.
The boy's interest and labor were well re-
warded, and he caught more muskrats
than any of the other boys who went to
their traps when it was convenient and
who did not set them in very good places
anyway. It was a matter of so much
pride to the boy to be successful that
he told all of the other boys about his
luck, and expected that they would pat
him on the back and sing his praises as a
famous hunter ; but, ah ! how much more
had he learned about muskrats than about
human nature. The other boys simply
would not believe at first that he had such
luck as he described, but he made them
believe it by taking them out to the barn
and showing them the skins carefully
stretched upon shingles with flat tails all
in a row. Did that end the difficulty ?
No indeed ! The other boys straightway
got ugly about it and said that if he had
such luck as that he must have taken the
muskrats out of their traps, and they told
Nellie and Susie what they thought about
it. Nellie and Susie responded with that

Hopkins's Pond. n

sympathy which is the sweetest of femi-
nine characteristics, and promptly sided
with the injured ones. Such was the boy's
first experience in competing for gains ;
but in later life he found that whenever
perseverance and work made him suc-
cessful over others who were less inter-
ested than he they at first refused to
believe, and when forced to believe de-
cided that he must have employed unfair
means.

The boy was very much grieved at the
attitude of his companions, whose esteem
and good-fellowship were more to him
than the muskrat skins or the powder and
shot that they would buy. The problem
at one time seemed to end at nothing
short of his giving up the profitable trap-
ping and letting the other boys do it all ;
but finally he hit upon the plan of telling
them of his best tricks, and showing them
the good trapping places that he had dis-
covered at times when they were com-
fortably snoozing in bed. That eased the
strained relations somewhat, but as the
best luck, unfortunately, continued to pur-

12 Hopkins's Pond.

sue the boy, his companions persisted in
showing their disapproval. Innocently
looking for praise, knowing that he had
earned it, there was not only no praise
forthcoming, but actual antagonism.

One day while lying upon the ground
by the dam, listening to the roar of the
water and thinking of the ways of differ-
ent animals, like a flash the thought came
to the boy that this antagonism on the
part of the other fellows was just simply
one of the habits of the boy animal. All
at once it was just as clear to him as were
the habits of the woodchucks and of the
partridges, and he remembered that the
perspicuousness of their leading traits had
been as unexpectedly revealed to him. So
firmly did this thought seize the boy that
he did not go home to dinner or to sup-
per, but lay there in the grass by the dam
and formulated an hypothesis which to this
day has made him happy and contented,
even though successful in life. That hy-
pothesis assumed that if one made the
habits of antagonists a matter of interest
from a natural history standpoint, there

Hopkins's Pond. 13

would be no necessity for defence or re-
venge, and all /)f the energy that would
otherwise be diverted into such channels
could be utilized for accomplishing some-
thing of real importance. One would
expect of course to defend principles, but
separately from self. Under the hypothe-
sis there was no need to care for either
praise or blame, and one could laugh up
his sleeve and watch unmerited praise and
unwarranted blame striking a balance with
each other while he was engaged in doing
something useful.

The more disagreeable a person was,
the more interesting he became as a speci-
men, but the most beautiful feature of the
hypothesis was the ability which it gave
one to forgive his worst enemies for any-
thing at any time and to find that insults
could neither be given nor received.

If it had not been for the muskrat
crisis, which took place at Hopkins's
Pond, the boy might to this day be wast-
ing energy in complicated strife instead of
enjoying comfort and pleasure while work-
ing for himself and for others. The boy

H Hopkins's Pond.

lives a long way from the pond now, and
his hair is grayer than it was in muskrat
days, but it is a pleasure when visiting the
old homestead to go over to the pond and
hunt for the heaps of unio shells and the
burrows under the bank, Ed and Nellie
are married and have sons and daughters
of their own, and he as a man of wide re-
nown has proven that fraudulent estimates
were furnished to us boys by the green-
eyed dealer in the game of life. Dave and
Susie drifted away from each other when
Dave went off to college, and while his
tastes were ascending, hers remained sta-
tionary, so that after a few years they were
not companions for each other at all. She
as a household drudge is very different
from the happy Susie whose skates rang
merrily with ours on the black ice under
the winter stars. Joe and Pete, who failed
to do much with the muskrats and who
were ugly about it, have failed to get up
early in any of their undertakings, and
they often go for aid to the boy who tried
to show them how to succeed in former
days, but it is of no use. They still grum-

Hopkins's Pond. 15

ble and complain of their lot, and are ever
ready to impugn the motives and the
methods of any man who is prosperous.
Jerry, who was about the dullest boy in
school, went West, and has made a for-
tune in railroads, so that it seems as though
almost anybody could do that ; but Henry,
who was one of the very best scholars, is
an extremely respectable clerk in Jerry's
employ, and he has never as yet perceived
opportunity standing out in as bold relief
as a fly in the milk. Tom was drowned
at sea, and no one seems to know what
has become of George. Everything has
changed excepting Hopkins's Pond, but
to-day the water pours over the dam as
of old, and the cricket's sharp chirp finds
its way through the duller sound. The
muskrat makes a rippling wake in the
moonlight, but I do not know whose boy
eagerly marks its course now. Pickerel
still suspend themselves under the lily-
pads, and a bullhead will pull any one's
cork 'way down under water on almost any
warm, misty evening. The pond that once
entered so much into the boys' life is now

16 Hopkins's Pond.

entering into the lives of a new genera-
tion of boys.

One day recently Echo, up among the
rocks, was heard protesting more loudly
than ever before, and soon a coaching
party of sightseers with four bang-tailed
horses and a brazen horn came rolling
along the road. One of the ladies touched
a gentleman on the arm and said, "There
is a pond." The gentleman answered,
"Yes." And the coach rolled on.

That was all that it meant to them, for
they were sightseers.

BONASA UMBELLUS, REX.

KING by courtesy of all game birds
and subject to no authority what-
soever is the proud ruffed grouse of our
North American forest.

Named by Linnseus after the wild ox,
bonasus, for his roaring, and specified as
umbellus because of the arrangement of
neck ornaments, he has received down
through cyclefuls of generations a strength
and beauty undegenerate. From the pines
and hemlocks of the ravine he inhales the
spirit and the energy of his moods. The
wintergreens and birches furnishing pro-
vender, give spicy life to his nerves and
muscles. From the crags he adopts the
suggestion of ruggedness, and from the
winter gale cons music for his symphony
by wings. The crash of the falling dead
tree involves an idea of death, and by op-

17

1 8 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

posites he rushes upward with startling
roar to liberty and life when found by the
hunter.

THE ROMANCE OF A GROUSE FAMILY.

Through a small south-facing valley in
western New York there runs a spring
trout brook. Several years ago the chop-
pers cleared off the arm of woodland that
extended from the main forest up along
the stream, and then the swale was quite
barren except for the crooked alders that
had not been worth cutting, and for the
fire-weeds that always come to the tempo-
rary assistance of newly cleared land.

Gradually the sheep and cattle began
to find pasturage there, and two or three
years later clumps of beech and poplar
saplings sprang up. Patches of briers then
crowded out the sparse grass, and here
and there a thrifty green hemlock arose
near the stump of its deposed ancestor,
so that the barren ground that had be-

o

come pasture land was transformed into a
brush lot.

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 19

One Sunday morning in May the sun
shone warmly in upon the budding sap-
lings of the swale. The naiads of the
brook murmured with hushed voices and
the trailing arbutus which overhung the
bank gave out a rarer fragrance than it
would have done on any rude week day.
Hardly a sound was heard save the
wandering tones of the church bell in the

o

far-off village, and the only appreciable
motion of the air was in the gentle breaths
that rise almost imperceptibly from the
warming soil of quiet glades.

With almost noiseless footsteps a de-
mure hen grouse walked from the edge of

O O

the thick moist woods and stopped for a
moment a little way out in the brush lot.
Again she went on and again paused,
looked about her and listened, with one
foot daintily lifted from the ground.
Thus by degrees she advanced out among
the saplings, her head gracefully moving
back and forth in unison with her foot-
steps and the pretty brown neck feathers
gliding so softly over each other that they
seemed like one warp and woof of silk.

2O Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

Stepping upon the gnarled root of a rough
lichen-covered stump she glanced over
her own smooth outlines and the bright
hazel eye looked the satisfaction of the
comparison, but yet she could not resist
the feminine impulse to rearrange several
feathers that were already perfectly in
place.

All at once she gave a start, and with
upstretched neck and elevated crest as-
sumed an attitude of strictest attention,
for from a distant point in the forest there
had come to her ears a low sound like
muffled drum-beats, the strokes first slow,
then faster, and ending finally in a long
tattoo.

Poised upon the root with partly opened
wings, she seemed almost ready to fly in
the direction from which the sound came,
but suddenly remembering herself, the
wings were closed again and her head
dropped bashfully until the echoless drum-
beat once more sounded through the
woods. It was the love call of Old Iron-
sides, a noble cock grouse that we had so
named because of his seeming impenetra-

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 21

bility to the shot that had been fired at
him time and again in the lower ravine
where he chose to spend most of his
time. Day after day the hen grouse had
listened for that call, knowing that Old
Ironsides would come in the spring-time
to find her. And now should she fly
impetuously to him and let him know her
impatience at his delay ? Oh, no ! The
annals of feminine nature contain no his-
tory of such rash action, so taking an
easy running jump into the air she flew
very quietly among the trunks of the big
trees of the woods, and then on curving
wings sailed slowly near the ground to a
point somewhere in his vicinity, and
alighting, waited for further summons.
The roll call sounded again, and she the
only musterer walked half hesitatingly in
the direction from which it came, sliding
quietly as a mouse behind boulders and
thick kalmia bushes, and looking as un-
concerned as you please.

At last he was in sight. High upon
the prostrate trunk of a huge storm-riven
pine he was pacing slowly to and fro with

22 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

martial bearing, his proud crest raised, his
broad tail partially spread, and all his
feathers glinting in the lights of the
woods.

The hen grouse was not many rods
away, gliding stealthily from one hiding
place to another, hoping that he would
discover her and yet not daring to lose
any of her reserve. How she did want
to pull his black ruffs though, and strike
him petulantly with her bill and pretend
to be real angry at him for rough play !

For a moment Old Ironsides stopped
his incessant pacing, glanced into the
thicket on one side and on the other, and
then his sturdy wings were struck repeat-
edly against his sides, sending forth the
long vibrations of a tone so low that it
seemed to roll along the ground rather
than penetrate the upper air, but with
such initial velocity, nevertheless, that it
rolled half a mile out of the woods before
losing itself in the grassy fields. How
grand the old warrior looked to the hen
grouse. But what if he should become
impatient and fly elsewhere to seek her

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 23

and not return for a long week ? No one
will ever know whether she purposely
stepped upon the small dead stick that
snapped and revealed her presence just
then, but who is prepared to deny a motive
for the seemingly accidental movement
of a dumb animal on such an occasion.

She was discovered and he was by her
side. Coyly she stepped away from him,
and then to gain further admiration,
which was all unnecessary, he spread his
great barred tail widely over his back, un-
folded the iridescent black ruffs until they
concealed his shoulders, dropped his
curved wing-tips to the ground, elevated
his pointed crest, and with curved neck cir-
cled and pirouetted about her, nodding
his head, fixing his strong, bold eye upon
her modest one, and stepping in front of
her to head off retreat, in such an exas-
perating way that it seemed as though she
certainly would scream.

He would not have made any such pre-
tentious movements if other cock grouse
had been about to criticise him, and how
the other hen grouse would have been

24 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

amused at her assumption of simplicity
and gentleness. She who was the boldest
of all when associating with others of her
own sex, and who could roar as loudly
with her wings as any cock grouse when
trying to unnerve an enemy.

But who could doubt that all of this
display on his part meant that he was
assuring her that he would be, oh, so true
and loyal forever and forever ? She be-
lieved in him most sincerely, and loving
and respecting tried hard to avoid being
annoyed at his overplus of attention.

It was not long afterward, however,
that he acted in a rather independent
manner and took little interest in family
affairs, so that when in June there was a
nest of ten eggs by the side of a clematis-
covered stump out at the edge of the
brush lot, Old Ironsides was either drum-
ming again in another woods altogether,
or he was associating with two or three
chummy reprobates of his own sex during
the livelong day.

The hen grouse took great comfort
with her eggs, though. Six of them were

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 25

plain buff-colored, and four of them were
marked with light-brown spots, and all
were smooth and snug-fitting in the nest.
Around about the nest she scratched some
dry, loose beech leaves which could be
whisked over the eggs in an instant with
one movement of her wings in event of
surprise by a marauder, and then, being
almost of the color of dead leaves herself,
she could hardly be seen when she snug-
gled cosily down over the eggs and drew
her head in closely. It seems too bad to
think that after all this pains the mother
bird might be discovered in her hiding
place, alone and unprotected as she was.
One evening a red fox trotted past, and
when near the nest he stopped and sniffed
the air, twisting the sharp tip of his nose
from one side to the other, and alternately
spreading and closing his whiskers, but he
could not quite locate the gentle prey,
and his attention was finally attracted
elsewhere by a little squeaking evening
mouse that had fallen from the soft cedar
bark nest in the wild grapevine near by.
The noiseless swoop of a great ogre-

26 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

eyed horned-owl gave the mother grouse
a cruel heart-thumping one moonlight
night just as she had almost dared to take
a little nap ; but the owl had dived for a
gray rabbit, and did not suspect that a
grouse was within easy reach. Why it
was that the minks and skunks and
weasels and raccoons and box turtles and
black snakes did not find the nest is a
mystery ; but there is some strange pro-
tection afforded by nature for ground-
nesting birds. Perhaps there is a certain
sense of honor among predaceous animals.
Hounds are disinclined to chase a nursing
she-fox, and it may be that minks know
better than to destroy the eggs that make
the golden geese, although we do know
that they are sometimes absent-minded in
their morals. The only enemy that found
the nest after all was a farmer's boy, and
he did it quite accidently by stepping so
near the old bird on his way home from
the trout brook that she was forced to fly
out. The boy's first impulse was to leave
the eggs undisturbed except for the turn-
ing that was absolutely necessary for an

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 27

accurate count, but suddenly remember-
ing that there was a "settin* hen " under
the old wagon in the woodshed at home,
he smiled a salute of thanks to his mem-
ory, and with well-meaning but rather
thick-fingered caution that would have
made most of us a little nervous if they
had been our eggs, he rolled up two of
the precious oval treasures in a youthful
fisherman's Saturday afternoon handker-
chief, and tucking them carefully away in
a side pocket trudged rather unsteadily
over the stones as his mind became occu-
pied with the thought of having two live
grouse at home that would respond to his
kindly efforts to tame them. At intervals
he regretted that he had not taken two
more of the eggs ; but his conscience was
quieter at knowing that the mother bird
could bear two pangs more easily than
four when she returned to the nest again.
For eighteen long days the mother
grouse had been sitting, and she anxiously
awaited the welcome sound of a little one
tapping at the shell for release. While
she had been waiting the blood-roots and

28 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

dog-tooth violets had dropped their petals,
the white cornel flowers had turned to a
feeble fading pink, the hepaticas and
anemones become dingy, and in their
places the azaleas and trilliums came out
in full sponsal array. The ferns, which
fought their way through the resisting
cold ground with clenched fists, had now
unfolded a generous wealth of fronds
under the influence of a spring-time sun
which brought harmony for all nature with
its presence.

The patient bird had seen the hosts of
warblers proceed bush by bush and tree
by tree from the southland toward the
northland, and it was time for her brood
to appear. When at last she heard a
faint tip-tapping and saw a movement
through a long crack in one egg, it was
not long before the gentle aid of her
bill had released a cunning little yellow
and brown head. Then a small strug-
gling wing appeared, and out tumbled a
dear, downy chick of a grouse. One after
another the eight young birds escaped,
and one of them in his hurry to be in the

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. $9

world with us ran around as soon as his
legs protruded ; and comical enough he
looked with the broken shell clinging to
his back.

At about this time the old Brahma
hen over at the farmhouse found under
her feathers two chickens that were
smaller than any that she had ever seen
before, and they were ahead of any cal-
culations that she may have made as
to time ; but she felt fully responsible for
them, nevertheless, and was disturbed be-
cause they ran away from her sheltering
wings and only returned to her most per-
sistent clucking. The boy, who had been
attracted by the solicitous calls of the hen,
caught one of the agile scampering balls
of down in his hand and held it up to ad-
mire the bright eyes and tiny bill that were
thrust through between his fingers ; but the
little feet clutched his fingers so tightly,
and the small heart throbbed so fast, that
in pity he put the grouse chicken quickly
down by the old Brahma hen again.
What transformation a little warmth had
wrought in the cold senseless yolk and

3° Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

white of the egg of a few days before,
changing it into a beautiful warm little
creature endowed with hopes, and fears,
and longings, and knowing its friends
from its enemies.

But what strange instinct was it that
kept leading these two babes of the wood
away from the motherly barnyard hen ?
What did they seek so persistently ?
Scarce an hour had elapsed since their
escape from the shell, and they had wan-
dered out of hearing of the good foster
mother to seek a wild mother who would
train their wild little natures in full sym-
pathy and understanding. Down into
the garden they ran, then out across the
lane and into the grass in the meadow.
Whither they were going they knew not,
but go they must. They were hungry,
but there was no mother to teach them to
eat, and thirsty without knowing what
water was. All day long they ran through
the grass and under the rail fences — first
brother ahead, then sister — the strange
impulse urging their tiny pattering feet
ahead as fast as they could go. It

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 31

was chilly in the evening and their soft
down was all wet and bedraggled with
dew, and when it became too dark for
them to see the way, they stopped by a
sheltering stone and snuggled up close to
each other with plaintive peeps ; but they
were too tired to sleep and every now and
then the drooping eyelids opened with a
start and the chicks pushed closer still to
each other and lisped their longings for a
mother's warm feathers. On the follow-
ing morning they could not run nearly so
fast, and very often they stumbled and
fell over the sticks and weed stalks that
seemed to them to offer more and more
opposition. The pretty down was rough-
ened so that it stuck together every which
way, and all forlorn they were indeed. If
one lagged far behind or chirped patheti-
cally when caught in a tangle of grass the
other would toddle back and wait, for
even such mites of birds felt the desire
for companionship in misery. Every few
minutes they had to stop and rest, and
again on they would struggle, but with
such weak, uncertain steps that it was

32 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

evident that their trifling energies were
almost expended long before the cold dew
had again soaked and chilled them. They
were not so very far from the brush lot
where their real mother was, but that night
when the two tender little wanderers tried
to comfort each other there was not a bit
of warmth for them to exchange and they
shivered and trembled so that they could
not have kept very close together anyway.
The morning sun looked down upon two
wee wet grouse babies lying side by side
in the field. Their eyes were closed,
their yearnings had all ceased, and no one
would have distinguished them from the
quartz stones of the field. Such a short
experience with life !

All of this while the mother grouse was
having care enough with her brood of
eight, even if two were missing. They
would eat nothing but insects, and it kept
the old bird pretty busy scratching over
the leaves to find enough for them. In
one corner of the brush lot there was a
large red-ants' nest, and there the chickens
had great fun when they had grown to

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 33

be nimble of foot. The mother would
scratch away a part of the loose heap of
soil, and then when the ants bustled out,
some devoted to angry passions and others
hurrying to carry off the long white eggs
that had been exposed, the little chickens
became so expert at snapping them up
that in the conceit born of successful ex-
perience they even chased a fly in the
absurd expectation of catching it, and
the fly was so much surprised at their
assurance that it allowed itself to be
caught, for such is often the relation of
ambition to seeming impossibilities. One
needs only to be stupid enough to obtain
everything.

The young birds grew rapidly and be-
came experts at avoiding their natural
enemies. If a sharp-shinned hawk flew
over, the mother gave a warning note,
and instantly each chick dropped so flat
against the ground that it was impossible
for the very best eyes to see one of them.
When the farmer's boy again had occasion
to cross the brush lot the hen bird had
advised the chickens to hide long before

34 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

he came near them, for even if he had
not cared to disturb the little ones, such a
boy may accidentally tread directly upon
angels if he does not see them, and to
lead him away the mother fluttered and
limped along the ground, pretending to be
lame and unable to fly. The boy knew
well this trick of the bird, but she pre-
tended to be so really in distress this time
that he floundered after her through the
briers. When he was far enough away,
however, she took to her wings as usual,
and circled by a long route back to the
brood again. One cluck was sufficient to
cause the ground to spring into life about
her, and the chickens were all safe.

A hooded adder that was sunning him-
self in the dry sheep-path one day sudden-
ly awoke and found a chicken quite near
him, and although the little thing was too
much frightened to run very fast it never-
theless got out of the dangerous vicinity
in time, and the adder had to console him-
self with a fat cricket. What luck for the
chicken that it was a slow adder instead
of a black racer, for the latter would have

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 35

followed it at any necessary rate of speed,
and after mesmerizing it by the cruel
charming of cross glides and super-am-
bient head and fulgurating tongue, would
finally have ended the vicious play by
creeping an ugly gullet over the soft
prey.

There was one enemy, though, that
came so insidiously that the mother gave
no warning note, and it would have availed
nothing if she had done so. A great harm-
less blue heron had just sagged along over
the brook in awkward flight, when from
his wake came a winged tick, the dreadful
lipoptena, buzzing in eccentric lines until
he espied the grouse. With devilish
precision of aim the uncanny harpy of a
thing struck the soft feathers of her back
and disappeared among them with an
eerie sidewise glide. The very thought
of harboring such a parasite was enough
to make the grouse shudder, but she
feared more for the little ones than for
herself. Follow the tick as she would
with her bill when a wriggling feather dis-
closed its locality she could not find the

36 Bonasa Umbellus, Rex.

horrible thing, until at evening, when the
chicks were gathered about her it huskily
buzzed from her breast. She caught it
quickly, but could not swallow it for the
tough elastic legs had encircled the edge
of her bill, nor could she crush it because
the leathery body expanded in any direc-
tion when she brought all her strength to
bear upon it. Finally the foul tick in the
most unconcerned manner deliberately
crawled from her bill and with its fiendish
directness struck the neck of one of the
handsomest of the brood and fastened it-
self there firmly in the intention of remain-
ing in spite of all remonstrance. On the
following day the tick, swelling with the
life blood of the chicken, discarded its wings
as an evidence of determination to remain,
and a few days later it gave birth to a single
offspring, full- winged and ready for attack.
The young imp fastened itself to the
chicken's neck close by its parent, and no
matter how hard the mother grouse pulled
at them she only succeeded in stretching
out their rubber-like bodies and in pulling
her little chick off from his feet. Day by

Bonasa Umbellus, Rex. 37

day the poor chick grew thinner and
scrawnier, while his sturdy brothers and
sisters went steadily along in development,
and the brood would soon have numbered
only seven had not the mother bird fortu-
nately led them far into the dank, cool
swamp on one torrid day, where much to
their delight was found a patch of skunk
cabbage with its heavy fruit. How the
mother did enjoy tearing open the green
fleshy balls for the seeds, and the little
fellows feasted upon the pulp like veritable
gluttons, not knowing that at the same
time the life of the invalid in their family
was to be saved. The pungent aroma
had only just begun to circulate through
their veins when the young tick loosed his
death-like grip and buzzed from one
chicken to another, trying to find one that
was agreeable, but they were all alike and
so it sidled up to a passing rabbit and
there found lodgment. In a few days it
had discarded its wings and then there
was no danger of its troubling the young
grouse again. The old tick had tumbled
off overpowered at the same time that the

38 Bonasa Umbelles, Rex.

young one flew, and that night she was
picked up on the sticky end of a toad's
long tongue and successfully swallowed.
Glory be to the toad !

In July the chickens began to feast upon
huckleberries, and when the August black-
berries were ripe they ate so many and
grew so fast that it soon became time for
them to throw off their short suits of soft
brownish chicken feathers and to take on
the finer colors and stout quills of real
grouse. With their change in dress came
a change in tastes, so that they no longer
cared for insects, but sought instead the
ripened seeds and berries and tender
leaves, unconscious of the fact that the
shooting season was near at hand and that
such diet was making them perilously fat
and luscious.

As their wings became stronger and
their tails grew longer, pride began to ap-
pear in different members of the family
and quarrels were frequent among the
youngsters. They were disobedient, and
stayed away from home at night when-
ever it pleased them to do so. The mother

Bonasa Umbelles, Rex. 39

grouse was not much disturbed at this de-
monstration of independence, for she knew
that she had raised a brood of the wildest
birds of the forest, and now in September
she was willing to leave them to their own
resources, satisfied that she had trained
them all properly in ways of self-protec-
tion.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE
EDDY.

GRAPEVINES and moonseeds and
Virginia creepers tangle their
branches together over the prostrate form
of the old lichen-covered mill. The
thump and rumble of the soggy wheel
have not been heard in the quiet little
valley for many a year, and the water
splashes over the drippy alga-decked shaft
and through the holes in the dam, throw-
ing clouds of cooling spray into the warm
sunshine.

Collecting its scattered forces the
stream bounds off among the rocks,
slides under the ferns, and tarries for an
eddy at the bend where the scraggy hem-
lock leans, giving the flecks of foam time
to circle about in the shade before they
are whirled away down stream again.
4o

The Autocrat of the Eddy. 41

Deeply sunken beneath the hemlock's
gnarled root is a shelving drift boulder of
gneiss, and under the shelf a big trout has
lived for many seasons. His colors are
dark, his protruding under-jaw is hooked,
his eye is fierce, and his manner is aggres-
sive. No other living thing of his size OF
less would dare claim a share of the eddy.
The beautiful despot has caught every
baby trout that ventured so far up or
down stream this year, and rumor has it
that he swallowed one of his best children
at a single gulp. The timid little dace
hide behind the stones in shallow water
and make eyes at him, but one by one he
takes them to his bosom and shows them
the folly of their ways. When a miller
balances on the tip of a waving fern frond
near the brink, the old trout throws water
at it with his tail and then whirls it under,
leaving a single white wing to float off
down stream and make the other trouts
mouths water. That shows his disposi-
tion.

The hemlock has stood on the bank for
a couple of centuries and the trout has

42 The Autocrat of the Eddy.

lived under it for a decade, but I have no
dates for the boulder and the stream.

When the winter storm fills the
branches with snow and cold winds moan
as they roam through the forest, the eddy
is covered with ice, but down at the edge
of the boulder the big trout tucks the dark
water snugly about him, slowly waves his
broad tail back and forth, passes an oc-
casional glassful of water through his gills,
and cares nothing for the storm and the
cold, but in quiet contemplation looks for-
ward with pleasure to the sins of a new
season. If the little white-footed mouse
hops trembling across the ice, the trout is
sorry he cannot take her down into his
comfortable home, but there is a coldness
between the trout and the mouse that he
loves, and little does the mouse suspect
that the bump which she felt on the ice
under her feet was made by the nose of
one that would fain approach nearer.

When the birds come back in the spring
and the blue-bird, nestling in the sunny
top of the hemlock, softly carols a love
song about Bermuda, the black and white

The Autocrat of the Eddy. 43

warbler breaks the brown monotony of
the rough bark as he glides up, down and
around it, and the aromatic fragrance of
the hemlock mingles with the gentler odor
of red maples and anemones and new
moss, the trout still spends his days near
the shelf of the boulder and watches for
the flies that the phcebe bird misses.
When he plunges out after them the timid
rabbit hops convulsively backward and
opens his great wondering eyes more
widely than ever, and the red squirrel
scurries up the hemlock trunk, scolding
and jerking his tail to give emphasis to
his remarks ; but nothing can the rabbit
and the squirrel see except a few circling
ripples chasing each other ashore.

When the summer days come, the
cicada sounds his shrill call from the dead
limb overhead, the noise of clinking
scythes is borne from the hay-field to the
woods, and the hot breath of the brakes
almost smothers the asters on the bank as
they look longingly at their cool reflec-
tions in the brook. The surroundings
have changed, but the trout lies deep

44 The Autocrat of the Eddy.

down in his favorite place. If a cow
wades into the eddy for a drink he does
not care. If a clap of thunder makes the
ground tremble, he is only a little bit un-
easy ; but there is one sound that puts
him on the alert for danger. He does
not often hear a fisherman's step, it is
true, but he associates a few startling
events with that sound. The stony New
England soil cannot compete with the
fertile Western lands ; the farmers' boys
have gone off to the cities, and the few
elderly people who remain care a good
deal more for 'lection and meetin' than
they do for fishing. But sometimes per-
sons who were once boys go back to the
old homesteads during the hot summer
days, and these old boys have not forgot-
ten the brook nor the trout that they
used to string on a forked willow stick,
as slippery as it was yellow. The big
trout has not had experience with so very
many hooks, but perhaps once a year for
the last ten years he has had a misunder-
standing with a fisherman, and ten lasting
impressions have been made on his memory.

The Autocrat of the Eddy. 45

For eleven months and one week in
every year the hemlock, the boulder, the
eddy, and the trout are inseparable ; but
when in the late September days the squeal-
ing wood-duck paddles among the float-
ing dead leaves with his pretty red feet,
and the muskrat with thickening fur dives
under the boulder in search of a winter
home, the trout has departed.

Then it is that one can hear inquiring
voices among the brook sounds if he will
sit quietly and not disturb the nymphs.
Under the hemlock's roots the voices are
low and congratulatory. The nymphs
there know the old rascal too well to wish
him back again, but they seem afraid
to speak much above a whisper, and they
hardly dare inquire for news among their
neighbors in the rocks ; but every now
and then a sprightly voice from up stream
or from down stream will call impatiently
for an answer from the eddy. An up-
stream sprite asks if a mink has caught the
trout, and softly comes an answer, saying
that the trout has learned by experience
to lie so near the bottom that a mink can-

46 The Autocrat of the Eddy.

not seize him from below, and he certainly
could not be caught fairly. " How about
the water snakes ? " asks another ; and
the reply, " He is too large for them to
fight," comes back in a moment. " Has a
snapping-turtle caught him ? " is asked ;
but a dozen replies at once say that no
snapping-turtle has passed along the
stream for a year and a half. "Has a
fisherman got him ? " asks one ; and such
a chuckling and laughing comes from all
sides that one is quickly convinced that
the fisherman is the least dangerous of
the four enemies of the trout.

The fact of the matter is that in the
fall the old trout's fancy lightly turns to
thoughts of love, and in this connection I
might as well say that of late years he has
been guilty of bigamy. Formerly he
would .quietly leave the eddy on a late
September day, and go down stream to a
shallow nook where a lively spring made
the sand boil up at the bottom in four or
five puffs at a time ; where the caddis
worms built their armor of sticks and
mica scales, and where alders growing

The Autocrat of the Eddy. 47

thickly, arched their branches overhead
and shaded the pool. In this bower he
found his lovely wife patiently waiting for
him, and although he would pay her
pretty close attention for a few days and
pretend to be interested, he would soon
wander about and flirt with the little girl
trout, who went wild over his beauty but
who had never seen the old villain at
home in his eddy.

Two or three years ago, however, a
heavy ice floe coming down in the spring
freshet knocked a new hole in the dam,
and whenever the water is high enough in
early October, the trout runs up through
the hole, and goes to see a wife that he
met under the lily-pads in still water in
the pond. She is larger even than he is,
and lazier, and not nearly so attractive
as the down-stream wife. Her eggs too
are dull yellow, while the down-stream
wife's eggs are bright straw color, and why
it is that he enjoys the pond trout's com-
pany no one can tell ; but there's no
accounting for tastes.

The old trout is not very deeply affected

4& The Autocrat of the Eddy.

by love, and he is always back at the
boulder by the middle of October.

Just a word about his children's nursery :

Down where the sunshine is stirred in the water
By zephyrs that bend the thin tops of the sedge,

The stream shallows out at the head of the meadow,
And dammed by a log, widens more at the edge.

The nettles are rank on the rich bank about it,
And out on the log straggle tussocks of grass ;

Beneath the warm driftwood the cricket is chirping,
And green-headed frogs tune their throats for
the class.

The little trout practise at vaulting and leaping,
And stir up the sand in their still, shallow pool ;

From daylight to darkness, and all through the

moonlight,
They try every trick that is taught in their school.

They strain at a gnat and then swallow a lady-bug ;

Deep into air they all dive for a fly ;
But larger they 're growing, not learning the lesson

That careless ones jumping at feathers may die.

And some of them reaching the age of discretion,
Will solemnly hunt for a deep shady hole ;

And like their old father — as cruel as Nero —
Will live as they please, without conscience or
soul.

The Autocrat of the Eddy. 49

I wonder if the old trout remembers my
attempt at getting him out upon the bank
last June. Cautiously I had crept to a
point where the bushes hid me from sight,
and slid the tip of the slender split-bamboo
rod through the same opening through
which the alder pole had been poked so
many times in years gone by. With a
slight cast, the brown-hackle and coach-
man and Reub Wood were tossed over
the lair of the trout, and drawn in enticing
zig-zags between the foam flecks on the
water. It was not the first time that arti-
ficial flies had failed to tempt him, and
when the cast was changed to a grizzly-
king, a silver-doctor, and a stone-fly, he
just kept perfectly still, and let me go
through all the motions of fishing, as
though that were all I had gone out
for.

Under a fungus-covered log I found a
handsome pink and squirming angleworm,
that did its very best on a bait hook deep
down where the trout's nose ought to
have been, but there was no demonstra-
tion of appreciation on the part of the

50 The Autocrat of the Eddy.

autocrat of the eddy. Next I found in
the moss a cri'mson newt that looked
delicious enough for anybody to bite, and
when the hook was carefully passed
through a small fold of skin, so as not to
hurt much, he was tossed over into the
pool. Around and around in little circles
the newt swam, and deeper and deeper,
until there was only a faint red wriggle to
be seen way down by the shelf of the
rock. Suddenly a vigorous tug whisked
the tip of the rod under water, the reel
gave a scream, and then all was quiet
again ; but I could feel the old fellow's
teeth grating on the tense line as he sul-
lenly moved his head from side to side.
Every instant I expected a rush up stream,
and a tumbling wrestle in the swift water
above the eddy, but still there was omi-
nous quiet. There I stood all ready for
action, the tip of the rod curved over and
almost dipping into the water, the line
drawn as tightly as a banjo string and
leading straight down into the depths of
the slow current. Gradually reeling in
the line, the trout came heavily to the sur-

The Autocrat of the Eddy. 51

face with all fins set, and surging doggedly
back and forth with short strokes of his
sturdy tail.

What could such tactics mean ? Why
was he reserving his strength at a moment
when, according to my notion, he ought
to be tearing about in frantic efforts to
escape ? The landing-net was reached
out toward him. It was almost under
him when, with a tremendous plunge, he
threw a shower of spray in my face, and
the broken line, swishing through the air,
snarled among the hemlock branches high
up out of reach.

The hook has worked out of his mouth
by this time, and at this very moment he
lies at the edge of the boulder beneath
the hemlock, waving his tail slowly to
keep his position in the uncertain current
of the eddy. When the stream roars with
autumn rains he will swing his tail to the
rhythm of the roar. When it thunders
in the spring freshet he will churn the
strong current with defiant tail strokes,
and stay by his boulder. When the
summer stream is gentle he will wave

52 The Autocrat of the Eddy.

his tail softly near the bottom sands, and
poise by the shelf of gneiss ; and as
years go on there will still be found
too-ether the hemlock, the boulder, the

o

eddy, and the trout.

WATCHING THE BRANT
GROW BIG.

THE raw east wind is shiver-laden.
Fine grains of sand scurrying along
the frozen beach rattle into the ghastly
open mouth and out through the ragged
bones of the breeze-dried gurnard. A
song-sparrow flips for a moment into a
thrummed marsh elder and then falls into
the salty desiccated grass again and hides
himself away from a wind that askews his
tail and parts his soft feathers almost to
the place where his cheery song is con-
cealed. It is not time for him. He
helps make springtime but cannot do it
all alone. Wait, little one, we give you
credit. A herring-gull essays to give life
to the March morning by hovering in low
circles over the ruffling black channel
water, and then finds it more in keeping

53

54 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

to stop and merge his color into that of a
stranded ice floe in the distance. The
leaden heaven moves slowly over us, un-
broken save for the slanting missiles of
sleet that peck against the cabin window
and then bound full tilt to their grand-
mother the good old South Bay. Captain
Jack, finishing his early cup of hot coffee
down below, comes up out of the compan-
ion-way on deck in his woollen shirt,
hitches up one suspender, runs his hands
through his grizzly unwilling hair, hawks
and expectorates over the rail. " Golly !
Tide runs like a hoss, don't it?" says
he, as a tangle of submerged eel-grass
scratches alongside in the swift ebb, and
the bowsprit of the sloop sidling in the
inlet current, bunts a periwinkle shell out
of the hard marsh bank that protected us
at anchor during the night. Captain Jack
does not produce much effect in the land-
scape about the marshes, because he looks
so much like any natural object — except-
ing: when he comes to town. He has

o

stout muscles and a good heart. 'T is
only his head that fails when he comes in
contact with civilization.

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 55

The sea air smells. It is growing richer
with the exhalations from looming flats as
the tide shrinks, and with ozone from the
growling, muttering surf of the outer
beach. I, eagerly inhaling, find in dis-
tending lungfuls of it the peace of the in-
fusoria of the flats and the power of the
grand, swinging ocean. Every breath
soiled by me is carried onward and away
to the westward and replaced by a new
one. How long, clean east wind, before I
am translucent within ? For last night
we left the city where men call air the
emanations from percolating swill and
cast-off things, and where the tarnishing
atmosphere, laden with entities of death,
reeks in the nostrils and dulls the eyes of
that poor mammal whose brain hangs de-
pendent over figures and fads, amid the
walls and corridors and walls again, that
keep from him the sight of this sweet
world. Is any other love like love for
nature ? Is any joy like the joy of the
sportsman ? I have seen the mother with
eyes suffused with tears of love for the
chubby boy in her arms. I have heard
the maiden pray for power to love her

56 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

lover more. But these loves are uncertain.
The boy grows wicked and brings gray
hairs and tears of sorrow. The lover is
better pleased with another. But nature
is steadfast. In the city the slinking street-
cur brings forth her mongrel whelps be-
neath the wharf, not knowing whence
shall come the food to turn to milk, and
the pampered pug, bonbon-fed, has not
the strength to propagate her kind. But
here all life multiplies, and in abundance,
and forever.

The bars of sand that divide currents
into currents and that direct the appor-
tionment of bay waters, are shining yellow
here and there, and the white froth rolls
up and blows across them. Hark ! From
out the west a merry, flying rabble ap-
pears, buffeting the winds, caring naught
for the cold. A rabble of warm birds that
on even line head down the bay with hurry-
ing wings and outstretched necks, chant-
ing as they go, and in good company.
Hark to the sound of their voices as they
pass. Did ever crowd of students seem
more hilarious ? Did ever more careless

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 57

throng play easy with the elements ? One
sings, and then another. Hear then all
throats together. Here a cluck and there
a tremolo, then back and forth the slogan
goes till the disappearing huddle leaves in
its wake vibrations that have softened the
winds and set the waves to tune. To-night
when all is still in the cabin you may hear
those voices of the morning when no birds
are near. When you are at home in the
city, a strange, weird music will come as
you sit before the grate fire in the twilight.
The chimney winds have caught the ca-
dence of the voices of the brant, and look-
ing into the gloom of the room you will
see again the moving wings that float
adown the ceiling. 'T is the shadow of
vibrations that have come from the far-off
bay. No others can hear the sound or see
the motion. 'T is for you alone, this de-
light of wandering impression that comes
through miles of shadow, to you sympa-
thetic.

Upon a narrow sand-bar lapped oy the
receding waves, Captain Jack and I step
out, to be saluted by the jets of forty

58 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

clams. We will not forget this recog-
nition on their part when it is time to re-
turn to the boat. In the sand-bar there is
a sunken box just big enough for me to
hide in. Its edges are level with the sur-
face of the sand, excepting where the last
high tide wanted some of the sand to
make little wavy ridges with. Captain
spades up fresh sand to hide the box with,
and while this is being done I walk to a
higher part of the bar that has not been
under water for three or four tides. The
wind has thrown the light sand into waves
and ridges, just as the water would have
done it. So wind and water are good
chums off on the Bay. Here is a bunch
of old wrack that pulled a scallop shell
from its quiet bed, and came to grief on
the bar. Here is a dried bit of leathery
devil's apron that was torn from an ocean
meadow perhaps by some derelict hull
roving in the faintly-lighted depths with-
out commission. Here is a cork that once
was young and tender bark in Spain,
growing under southern stars until men
bargained for it with money. Then it

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 59

perhaps saw one carousal after travelling
to foreign shores, and it will be buried on
this cold bar by shifting sands. Here is a
feather that was shaken from the wing of
a goose yesterday, when I was not as near
as this to the goose. All about in the
sand are tracks of plebeian gulls, but here
is something better — here is the patrician
track made by the pretty black foot of a
brant.

I lie down flat upon my back in the box.
The brant decoys are standing all about
so naturally that only the Captain and I
would suspect them to be such false
things. I am waiting. The box is cold
and wet. The spray flies into my eyes.
The surf roars in the distance. One eye
peers over the edge of the box and scans
the horizon. What a jingle of wings was
that, as a beautiful whistler and his homely
mate passed overhead. They have fin-
ished the preliminary love experience early
in the year, and are now constant and true
to each other long before the spring
zephyrs have felted into love the vaga-
rious fancies of other water fowl. How

60 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

strange that the male should be the most
beautiful among almost all living things
excepting the people. And yet the male
whistler, superb as he is, had to seek his
mate and go through a lot of nonsense,
just as though she were a beautiful girl.

I did not shoot at that pair of whistlers.
They would have made an excellent stew,
with pork and potatoes in the same pot ;
but they were so happy with each other
that I allowed them to pass. It makes my
mouth water now to think of them for
dinner, but the treason is all in my stomach
and not a bit of it in my heart. Flocks
of brant are moving down the bay in
straggling bunches or in even lines.
Some oysterman has stirred them up, or
perhaps they think that the eel-grass is
more tender farther on, and they will en-
joy it until it seems to be not quite so
good as the grass that they left. Few
people know why the brant move back
and forth in this way, but I know just how
they feel, because I have many times
camped on one end of a pond and always
found the fishing best away up at the other

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 61

end, no matter which end I camped on.
Thus the eel-grass in the distance is
always green for the brant.

Four brant are coming this way. Are
they coming this way or will they choose
some other bar? They are winnowing
along low over the water and apparently
looking for companions. I throw up one
foot to attract their attention. They see
it. They slacken speed and "lift" for a
better view. Yes ! They see the decoys.
Look out now ! On they come and bigger
they grow. At first they were no larger
than pigeons, now they are as big as ducks,
and in a moment more they will look
as big as rocs, before my very eyes, and
right here with me — all of us active — in a
few cubic feet of the world. They have
ability to be elsewhere, but they won't use
their resources in time. They will be
right here in the midst of the trouble.
They call to the decoys. I answer. How
fine and black their shapely heads and
necks. What strong brown wings. They
are coming. Now they swerve to the
northward. There they circle back, show-

62 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

ing white flanks as they wheel into line.
They are not coming. They are going
toward the middle of the bay. See that
persistent one. He wants to come to me
and the others do not, but that one is
so determined that the others weaken in
their good judgment and follow him.
Now they stop fluttering. One sets his
wings, another sets his wings, all four set
their wings, and come slantting down an
easy incline of air right toward the decoys.
Neck and neck, wing and wing, tail and
tail, on they come. Up I jump and breed
confusion. " Ronk ! " says one, and down
through the smoke he tumbles with a
mighty splash. " Kruk / Kruk!" says
another, and then he makes the spray fly
ten feet into the air at the edge of the
bar, and causes the clams to squirt for
rods around. " B-r-a-n-t / B-r-r-r-a-n-t !
B-r-r-r-a-n-t ! " say the other two, swish-
ing themselves right up into high air.
Yes, brant they are, and beauties too.

The March wind is piercing, the box is
damp, the flying sleet rattles on my coat.
I lie upon my back listening to the lapping

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 63

of the waves, the crepitation of shifting
sand, the rustle of the moving- tide and
the voices of distant brant and gulls. The
cold clouds overhead have no comfort in
them. My teeth chatter and a tear runs
down my right cheek. Wet sand sticks
to the skin between my red fingers. One
small mouthful of just the right thing
suffices to start in my innermost depths
a dull cherry red glow that gradually
diffuses itself in grateful warmth to the
middle of every bone and to the ends of
my wet sandy fingers. Who would object
to that, I 'd like to know ? Now then for
another brant. There comes one from away
up the bay. Is he going or coming? Com-
ing ! No — going ! Well, it all depends on
which end his head is placed, and I can-
not tell from here. He is coming ! Big-
ger he grows and rounder he appears, and
being alone will seek company. He sees
the decoys and comes straight toward
them without regard to the direction of
the wind. Now he stops flying and comes
tilting along unsteadily on curved set
wings, balancing, sidling, balancing, com-

64 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

ing, growing bigger and bigger as he
skims the foamy, splattering waves without
quite touching them. I '11 let him alight.
There, now ! Right on the bar between me
and the decoys. How trim his outlines
are, and how gracefully he walks for one of
the goose family. Why do those bright
dark eyes fail to perceive me ? He is
young, as his wing coverts show by their
ashy tipped feathers, and knowing that
age is to be respected he puts confidence
in the old decoys, unwilling to believe
that I am terrible. He scoops up a bill-
ful of sand here and there where it looks
particularly tempting, and asks the decoys
something in a low voice. Now, I must
take him into the box, for other brant will
be coming. He jumps almost like a wood-
cock as I show him a great jack-in-a-box,
and — Halloa ! Right barrel snapped ; left
one shot a little under as the wind slanted
him to one side. There he goes as fast
as ever he can, away, away, away. I
never saw that brant before in all my life
and never shall see him again.

Out of the west horizon a corps of

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 65

twenty brant comes marching along
through the air, as orderly as soldiers.
I throw up a hand to attract their atten-
tion. They swerve. They wanted to
come to this bar in the first place, but
they have somewhere seen someone else
throw up a hand to them, and the old
ganders are suspicious. There are too
many eyes in that flock. Some of the
younger birds start toward the bar again
and the wary ones follow. Good judg-
ment does n't count among friends. On
they come with a great clamor, some ris-
ing, some settling, some hoarse, some
clear voiced, some curving their wings to
sail in, some fluttering and wavering and
giving cries of warning. The whole flock
huddles and separates, and huddles and
rises, and wheels to go away. Then they
turn and head for the decoys again, but
the old birds have mounted high enough
to peer over into my box and they cry
" Look ! Look ! " with such vigor that the
whole drove again whirls into a broadside
for final departure nearly twenty rods
away. The shot slaps and cracks against

5

66 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

their feathers, but only one bird slips
out of the flock and drops perpendicularly
into the water, while the rest choose a
horizontal trajectory. Too many eyes.
Too far away.

It is almost noon. The tide has fallen
so far away that there is no water near the
bar, and no more birds will come until an-
other tide has risen. There is plenty of
humble game within reach for the larder,
though. Razor clams first ! The edges
of their shells are just on a level with the
soft sand of the flat, but they must be ap-
proached gently, for they are sensitive in
the company of strangers, and the fingers
of a hungry enemy will grasp only a little
maelstrom of roily water unless he is care-
ful. I seize one of the razors, but how
hard he pulls ! Working him back and
forth rapidly in his hole causes the water
to loosen the sand all about him, and up
comes a long, fat fellow, twisting his white
foot in efforts to escape. When we work
a razor back and forth in his hole the sand
around him becomes mushy, according to
a definite plan of nature, which turns the

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 67

chances immediately against the clam in
favor of the one who ought to have him.
It will not do to be greedy and pull too
quickly, for nature has decreed that in
such case the microbes are to have the
plump separated foot, while man is to con-
tent himself with the pretty shell contain-
ing only liver and gills and other organic
bric-a-brac. It does not take long to
gather a handful of razor clams, but that
is not enough, and I cannot lay them down
while gathering more because they would
walk offand poke themselves endwise into
the sand while I was looking the other
way. It makes one feel like a cannibal to
eat such lively animals, but if men are
half as sweet as razor clams, we must be
cautious about criticising the habits of the
Sandwich Islanders of the old school. I
cannot lay this handful down, so my cap
must answer for a basket. A fine panful
of razors we finally have on the deck of
the sloop. Capt. Jack sets up serried
ranks of them in the dripping-pan and puts
small pieces of bacon in odd nooks and
corners. When they are done a delicious

68 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

steaming morsel lies upon a gaping shell,
all ready for a little lump of butter and a
plunge for the good of those chosen ones
who know how to catch razor clams.

We .pull the boat up out of the main
channel and spear a few eels. Over miles
of this bottom one can strike a spear
blindly into the mud with fair probability
of hitting an eel that has stored himself
up for the winter a few inches below the
surface, and in choice spots two eels some-
times come up at once on the tines of the
spear. It is taking unfair advantage to
spear the half-torpid things, but they are
delectable and that makes a difference.
Then again we can get revenge on behalf
of the crabs, for nothing is more relentless
than an eel that has set out to remove
one by one the legs of a confused and
most uncomfortable soft crab. We can
spare the denizens of the bottom many
such sights by incarcerating a bucketful
of the offenders. When there are eels
enough in the pail we push the boat over
quahog ground, and no matter how hard
it blows or how fiercely the sleet drives, a

Watching the Brant Grow Big. 69

lot of round quahogs are soon rolling into
the scuppers and wedging themselves into
the rake just as our fingers get warm and
dry. We have to be a little cautious in
walking about, because it is a well-known
fact that the quahog will turn when trod-
den upon.

Now for the soft-shelled clams that fired
a salute when we alighted upon their bar
in the morning. The shooting-box spade
turns them out of their compact moulds
in the sand half a dozen at a time. Ten-
der and luscious they are, and so corpulent
that they cannot draw their necks into the
shell and close the shell at the same time.
Just one thing more and the larder is
complete for the day. We anchor in deep
water between the submerged flats and
crack open a quahog, putting a sweet
clean piece upon the hook, and casting
the line astern. In a minute the sinker
is dancing ; I give a quick jerk and then
bring up hand over fist a fish as flat as
a flounder and weighing about a pound,
made of just the right shape to fit the
bottom , of a frying-pan and become

70 Watching the Brant Grow Big.

nicely browned on both sides when the
fins curl up in a crisp. Five or six flappy
flounders are pulled up on deck, and away
we go again to our safe anchorage. Who
would ever go hungry on the Great South
Bay ? There, within a radius of half a
mile, we have helped ourselves abundantly
to brant, razor clams, quahogs, soft clams,
eels and flounders, and have had such fun
in doing it that we want the man who is
prepared for suicide to come down here
for one day's sport before he decides that
life is really too much of a bother. Our
hands are cold, our clothes are wet, espe-
cially at vital points. Our noses and ears
would do yeoman service in a summer
refrigerator. But the cabin stove has a
red hot lid, and the change to dry warm
woollen clothing with a cup of hot coffee
will pay for a month of discomfort. I am
sorry for the man who never stops to think
how well off he is with his every-day
clothes on.

THE LAIR OF SOMETHING
STRIPED.

''in HAT rock 's awash, aswash. Tighter
A draws the mussel on his byssus.
The tide has turned. A thousand kelp
streamers point the way the flood must
go, and eagerly, not drooping as at last of
ebb when obedience had seemed to satisfy
their importuning.

The seeping barnacles make merry
and clap their valves, for diatoms are
coming, the sweet, the beautiful, food for
the rough and ugly ; coming from the
devious gardens that they glorified among
the schist splinters and boulders, beneath
the swelling and subsiding and unceasing
flow of green illumined sea water.

The rock is yet uncovered. No 't is
not. And then once more it seems to
sink, till the lolling pelage of wrack lifts
71

72 The Lair of Something Striped.

up a sign for help to the slow sweep of an
engulfing wave, and welters disconsolate
though the saved rock again appears. It
is not to disappear for long, this archaic
boulder of granite. It has never moved
but once e'en though the mammoth rubbed
it with his woolly ear or the heedless elas-
mosaurus bounced against it in the chase.
It moved but once, and then the straining
glacier dropped its load at the foot of the
cliff. Up that bold gray cliff the autumn
breaker bounds, roaring and splurging
with hoarse challenge, till clouds of spray
separated in the churning turmoil float up
to higher ether to make sunset nimbus,
and show the October foliage what gentle
beauty may come from harsh parentage as
well as from homes of peace.

At the foot of the cliff purling summer
coamers smooth the hard walls that resist.

The boulder, sunken but a fathom at
the flood, rises not enough to arouse the
ire of forceful antagonists, and unmoved
as sphinx to the questions of the changing
seas, it needs not to turn before the brunt,
not topple to the wooing. Now the tide

The Lair of Something Striped. 73

runs smoothly over it. Caught in an eddy
a red seaweed whirls and spreads its shoots,
and a sertularia colony swinging near has
descended to mimicry of botany without
putting on any air of condescension. The
tremulous algse waving from cliff to boulder
and from boulder to cliff, make in the water
a clear arcade, a runway. Out from a
crevice glides a cautious chogset into the
runway, now poising by a crimson sponge,
then backing slowly underneath a trans-
lucent green sheet of sea kale. A crab
makes haste to cross the round yellow
bottom pebbles, carrying a burden that
he fain would hide, for this is a lair, and
he knows it. What is his burden, though ?
Oh, look, you unbelievers in disinterested
friendship. 'T is a stranger crab that had
to shed its armor, and unprotected needs
the guarding of a friend for two whole
days or more. There 's nothing " in it,"
as the politicians say, for the faithful pro-
tector, and yet he will not weary, but fight
valiantly if necessary, and lose his very
life, and for that there is no reward nor
other life.

74 The Lair of Something Striped.

Like silver arrows a troop of spearing
nervously dart from rock to wrack and
from algae to the surface, not stopping,
but alert, leaving a lazy enemy no hope.
What is it they fear in this quiet aisle ?
A slow tautog drops with the current into
the runway and then as deliberately has
gone.

A shrimp escaping from the sprightly
pilot-fish stupidly backs straight into
the clutches of a dull sea anemone at
the bottom of the boulder. This is what
might be called a turn in affairs. The
pilot-fish knew how to catch a shrimp.
The anemone did not. The anemone
has the shrimp, however, and possessing
now a fortune it withdraws from old
friends and becomes exclusive and dis-
agreeable.

A sinuous eel slides in and out among
the rocks, searching for love-lorn nereid, or
for mantis praying for relief from danger,
which is granted till danger comes, and
then he is lost, in spite of supplications,
for nature cares no more for the back-
sliding mantis than she does for sleek

The Lair of Something Striped. 75

eels. The eel keeps near the bottom, as
though fearing. He dreads not the blue-
fish nor bonita nor swift squeteague, for
the runway between the boulder and the
cliff is not deep enough for them. See
them farther out, though, rising in the
curl of a mounting billow till the sun has
shot through beneath them, leaping with
an energy that goes with fish that fight
strong tides for life, not resting, never
lagging. How dangerous such needing
maws as theirs ! An ink-laden squid
pumps faster with his siphon engine as he
steers in graceful curve through the run-
way. He too suspects that it is a lurking
place. What shadow slowly moved across
the bottom then ? Was it from some
pausing cormorant or circling tern ? From
this jutting storm-bleached jag of cliff I
dare to look up, but no bird flies over-
head. 'T was but the shifting of the kelp
perhaps, for down in the runway waters I
see almost as clearly as through the north
wind. 'T was but the waving of sea
fronds.

Why though has all sign of life stopped

76 The Lair of Something Striped.

in the runway ? The shadow falls across
the bottom, and following it from behind
the curtain of fronds there comes forth a
fish so stately, so dignified in bearing,
that surely he deigns not to notice these
lesser fish that flee from his presence.
Like a wolf he is. Not in outer likeness
perhaps, but in demeanor, and in weight,
and that great weight made up of all the
sorts of things that swim the tide or crawl
the bottom, collected by him and made to
form a fish of wondrous strength, with
dark straight stripes to mark the shapely
sides. A clear stern eye has he, and jaw
like any trap. His glistening scales are
white where white, and black they are
where black. Resting upon broad fins he
balances beneath the sea arbor of his lair
and shows no fear, but seems to be among
familiar surroundings. I '11 quietly toss
to him a choice bit of menhaden. It
slowly drifting sinks. The film of oil
rises. He takes the bait and looks for
more. I '11 give it to him. There 's a
hook in it, and fastened to the hook
600 feet of hard-laid line. Down the

The Lair of Something Striped. 77

current it settles. He spreads a broad
tail and turns quizzingly sidewise to take
a look, then back he bends, and turning a
finely outlined nose into the tide rests
again, and lets the baited hook slide by.

The sun sinking below the horizon
takes one last look into the sea by a trick
of angular refraction, and finding the bass
all safe calmly moves away to make day
elsewhere for awhile.

The chink of a migrating finch over-
head, the squeak of a bat, are evening
sounds, and their harmony is not marred
by the splash of a hooked bass.

The moon rises. It makes a straight

O

and lighted road through the midst of
dark heaving waters. The fishes are
moving on beneath the waves, the birds
are flying southward overhead. I '11 hoist
my sail and follow the moon road between
the fishes and birds and think of ways to
catch the striped bass.

SUCKER DAYS.

THE shytepokes dangled their loose
legs doubtingly before settling
down to a wobbly perch among the red-
budding tops of the soft maple saplings,
but after many balancings and upstretch-
ing of necks they could finally look
down through the white sumacs and
choose a safe alighting place in the mucky,
trembling swamp where we boys never
could go. It was not a large swamp ; in
fact, it would not strain any one very much
to heave a stone half way across it now-
adays, but at the time I have in mind it
was a great sphagnum-lined mystery of a
place, and it seemed to us youngsters that
the other side was way, way over there.
The boulders in the rough pastures round
about it were partly hidden with chaplets
of huckleberry bushes and sweet fern,
78

Sucker Days. 79

and here and there along the stone walls
some of the butternuts that a past gener-
ation of squirrels hid too well had devel-
oped into scrawny trees. Through the
leafless bushes of the swamp we could get
a glimpse of a little round pond hole out
near the middle, and tradition had it that
no one had ever found bottom there.
That was because no one had ever tried.
If any one had ever found bottom there
he surely would have told of it ; and so
the question remained as settled with us.
The swamp was just one of a thousand in
New England, but special interest cen-
tered in this one because Brown Brook
emerged from it, and with its many little
swirls and pourings and bubblings among
the bogs and rocks finally entered the old
mill-pond right where the button bushes
grew thickest.

Brown Brook was not exactly a spring
brook, because in the summer-time the
water got pretty warm, and sometimes
there wasn't very much of it anyway, and
that 's why the boy of whom I am going to
write never heard from the ten small mot-

8o Sucker Days.

tie-backed, skittish trout that he lugged
over from Sandy Brook in a tin pail and
.put into it. Possibly they are up in the
bottomless swamp hole now, and weighing
a pound or two apiece, but only the minks
know about that.

There was one thing that the brook was
good for and that was its suckers. Who
ever heard tell of a brook that was good
for nothing? In the springtime, when
the soft maples were beginning to invite
the purple finches, suckers ran up from
the mill-pond, and during the day re-
mained beneath the large stones in the
brook. When school was out for noon
recess "us boys" had time to run over to
the brook and catch a sucker or two in
our hands by feeling for them under the
stones and then encircling them in all the
death-like grip that was possible in short,
chubby fingers. The suckers were not
very large ones, but sometimes a half-
pounder was caught, and on a day that I
want to remember all about, the boy found
an "awfully" great big oneway in under a
shelving rock. Just as he was getting

Sucker Days. 81

ready to grab, the sucker darted out be-
tween the boy's feet and fluttered and
splashed over the ripples into another hole
farther down stream.

Any fish is to a boy something worthy
of his entire attention, and it did n't mat-
ter if the water in the hole where the big
sucker had gone was rather deep, for who
cared about getting in over the tops of
his boots when such a fish was within
reach ! I don't remember exactly how
old the boy was, but probably he had not
heard the first jingling of the peep-frogs
more than eight times, and it was hard
for such small ears to notice the bell that
announced the ending of recess time, or
the calls of Ned Ellis and Joe Carroll as
they ran back to school.

The boy knew precisely under which
stone the big sucker had gone, and care-
fully reaching one hand beneath it he
could feel the cool, smooth sides of the
fish as it crowded a little farther in away
from him. Then, putting the other hand
in position to head off attempts at escape,
he suddenly held the struggling, gasping

6

82 Sucker Days.

sucker in both hands. The stones were
slippery, and in an effort to steady himself
the boy partly lost his grip, and felt the
sucker surely working out of his hands
— you know how it feels — and despair-
ingly tossed it toward the bank. The
sucker landed among the dry pebbles,
protruded his long, white nose, and opened
his round mouth in surprise, and then with
one ungainly flop threw himself into the
brook again. Why can't a fish ever flop
the other way just once ? The boy in
confusion could not see which way the
fish went, and a moment later there was a
peculiar sort of mist in the boy's eyes that
prevented him from seeing much of any-
thing, and the round drops, welling up
straight from his heart, followed each
other in quick succession down his cheeks.
Sorrowfully he trudged up to the school-
house and made wet tracks to the hard
board seat in the middle of the room.
That seat had seen quieter moments, when
the boy had time to " fire " spit-balls upon
the wall overhead, or to bore converging
holes in the desk, into which various

Sucker Days. 83

luckless flies were tucked when the teacher
was looking the other way. Miss Chap-
man was of the tall, austere type, and her
glasses presented the only smooth outlines
in her mein. She must have been young,
for her moustache was not markedly visi-
ble from the other end of the room, but
her strong right arm swung with a free-
dom that we were accustomed to see only
when the best of woodchuck skin flail
strings gave security at a joint. Usually
she took off her glasses before descend-
ing to the boy's seat, but on this occasion
there was too much necessity for prompt-
ness in attending to him, and they rattled
upon the floor in the midst of a medley
of ruler whacks and sobs. All that after-
noon and during the night visions of the
big sucker filled the boy's brain to the
exclusion of all other ideas, and at the
woodpile at home he unconsciously made
a sudden grab for the biggest stick and
scattered the armful already collected.

Of course we boys all rushed off to the
brook next day at recess, and while Ned
and Tom and Joe went -to fishing under

84 Sucker Days.

the stones near the road, the other boy
followed the brook down into the pasture
and began to poke under rocks in all of
the holes, to see if the big sucker was still
in that part of the stream. All at once it
rushed out in sight, and the shouts of the
boy brought the others on a run as fast as
they could come.

" Right under that stone he is, fellers,
and an old whopper, too, by golly," said
he. " I 'm going to hold on to him this
time, you bet." Just then came the sound
of the school bell across the fields. It is
called a musical sound, but somehow or
another it seems to a boy to be different
from the voices of the robins and the
wood-thrushes. Ruefully the boy paused
a moment and listened, then reaching
around and feeling the tender parts that
had not quite recovered from the previous
day's reddening, he decided that they
would have to stand one more ruling
from the bench, and into the brook he
stepped. His hands trembled with excite-
ment as they went under the water and
under the stone and felt the fins of the

Sucker Days. 85

hiding sucker, but with a decision that
brings results in all things he squeezed
the fish in a good double grasp and car-
ried it so far out in the meadow grass
that it left all hope behind. Was n't it
a beauty ! We picked it up and let it
flounce out of our hands a dozen times
before it became submissive.

"How will you trade him for mine?"
asked Tom Allen. " Oh, but that one of
yours ain't anywheres near so big as this
one," said the boy. " No," said Tom,
"but them big ones is all innards and no
meat. Just heft mine onct. There 's
twicet as much meat on him." So, always
ready to be taken advantage of in a bar-
gain for any plausible reason, the boy
traded the great big sucker for Tom's
smaller one, and we lugged our respective
fish almost to school and hid them under
the stone wall. It is unnecessary to refer
to our experience within the doors, but
our aches were tempered with the prospec-
tive exultation of carrying the suckers
home after school was out. And then
an unexpected movement of the boy's

86 Sucker Days.

mind suddenly shifted it to an impulse
to give his fish to poor forlorn Uncle
Bennett, whose bent back and meagre
rheumatic legs tried all day long and
all night long to find one soft spot in
the lonely cabin down by the blacksmith
shop. His wife dead, his only son a
drunkard, his little hoard spent, it was
with a bowed head that he accepted a bit
of help from the town, and an occasional
gift of a bushel of potatoes or a peck of
turnips from some prosperous neighbor.
He could not go to the poorhouse over
the hill, where old Sperry's wife, and the
blind colored cooper, and the crazy Dutch-
man, and Mr. Bradley's worn-out hired
man, freed from the care of providing for
the immediate necessities of life, had risen
to a social position far superior to that of
the man whose pride forced him flat
against the earth. His poor old heavy
heart would lift for the moment and some-
thing like light would shine through his
sad blue eyes whenever we boys went in
to see him, carrying from home a kind
word and a batch of fallen sponge-cake

Sucker Days. 87

that was taken out of the oven too soon
and would not do at all for the sewing
society on Thursday evening. How much
better to give a sucker to Uncle Bennett
than to receive almost anything from
Heaven one's self. He should have the
precious fish and the family at home must
depend upon the market down in the vil-
lage— as they always preferred to do.
The boy laboriously wrote on a piece of
paper torn from the soiled fly-leaf of his
speller, "lets Givum 4we- too unkelbent,"
and stealthily passed the note over to
Tom Allen's desk. A quick nod of Tom's
head from behind his " joggerphy " showed
that an enterprising boy who could de-
fraud his companion because that was one
of the laws of trade, was nevertheless
unable to resist the impulse to give his
plunder to Uncle Bennett. That ap-
peared to Tom a matter of right and
wrong in which he was governed no doubt
by the laws of compensation, because
Uncle Bennett had such a superlative de-
gree of nothing at all.

It was almost four o'clock. Who ever

88 Sucker Days.

could remember the hard words in the
speller right on the verge of four o'clock
and freedom and good deeds ! Miss
Chapman slowly laid down the book
that she was accustomed to hold before
her face as a sort of ambush from which
she surprised new scholars who thought
that she was reading. The little brass
desk-bell tinkled and the announcement
was made that school was dismissed, ex-
cepting for the two boys who had waded
in the water, and they must stay for
fifteen minutes after school. One by
one those fifteen rusty minutes hitched
along the floor of time, and then the two
impatient boys, waving their caps in the
air, bounced out of the doorway and hip-
pety-hopped over to the stone wall for
their hidden treasures. Alas for the
trustfulness of youth ! The old gray cat
had found the fish and had dragged them
off to some other hiding-place,

THE EVENING OF AUG. i, 1895.

AN Indian, a salmon, a syenite rock.
The salmon lies upon the grizzly
slope of syenite, and the Indian, fitting
his wet moccasins to the rough foothold,
rests one end of my gaff against the
silvery scales of the big salmon to prevent
him from sliding back into his roaring
home.

The sun is setting, and for a brief mo-
ment the rays seem to warm the bleak
hills of white caribou moss and the dark
gullies of stunted black spruce, but the
warmth is in the color only. The steel-
gray clouds come westward from the ice-
blocked straits of Belle Isle with a fine
bracing air, but there is no suggestion of
real midsummer. A white-throated spar-
row among the wild peas pipes loudly to a
neighbor up among the chicoutai berries

90 The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

and then sweetly and clearly the spiritual
notes of a hermit thrush ring out farewells
to the day that is passing.

The salmon has never known any other
river but this one. His mother hid the
egg securely under a heap of clean spark-
ling sand in a shallow tributary of the
river away up on the great Labrador
plateau one day in October, and then
hurried back to the sea before the ice
caught her. The sheldrakes and wild
geese had returned in the springtime be-
fore the little salmon had worked his way
out of the egg and up through the sand
into the clear water of the brook. Two
years he spent in the river as a gay parr,
splashing out after the ephemeridae on the
surface, scooting after the dodging stickle-
backs, and slyly waiting for the small eels
to venture away from their protecting
stones. Then he lost his scarlet spots,
and coming down the river in smolt colors
went out among the rocky islands in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, where sea plants
make red and yellow thickets at the bottom.
At first he caught snappy crustaceans- and

The Evening of Aug. i, 1895. 91

tender sandlaunces, and found such an
abundance of food that he soon grew to
proportions which enabled him to grapple
with a capelin or smelt. By the end of
his third year he dared to rush into a
scattering school of herrings and select
the fattest one for himself, and, as a trim
grilse, he appeared again in the river,
coming up with his older anadromous
relatives on their migration. He did not
have to keep an eye on the voracious sea
trout now, and he escaped the seals easily
because they chased the larger salmon
and did not give him much attention.
He felt the pride of a mature fish, how-
ever, and a superiority over his sisters,
who needed to wait in the sea a longer
time before they were ready to accom-
pany him up to the old homestead in
summer.

In six or seven years he became a won-
derfully strong salmon, making annual
trips up the river and fearing nothing but
the otters and the bears when he lay in
shallow currents at rest. The osprey and
the golden eagle occasionally dropped

92 The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

down at him from out of the sky, but they
stopped when they were near enough to
see how swift the water was in which he
rested with such apparent ease. The on-
set of the hissing chute and the smother-
ing white water of the exploding falls were
to him nothing more than a challenge to
try his strength. He would first leap into
the air below the falls and take a good
look at them, for they could kill him stone
dead in an instant if he were to allow it.
After looking at the falls he would run up
more closely and hold his head out of the
confusing, boiling foam for an inspection
of the easiest-looking place. Then he
would spring six feet into the thunder,
and hurled back violently with injury to
his dignity he would gather his powers
for a mighty effort, and in one clear pa-
rabola of twelve feet or more would sail
through the air over the flying water at
the foot of the falls and force himself up
through the awful current to a resting-
place in the eddy above.

This he would do when the day was
bright and clear, but through the night

The Evening of Aug. i, 1895. 93

and on dark days he would remain quietly
in favorite places where the water ran
at the rate of about two miles per hour,
over pebbles and cobble-stones. It looked
as though he remained in the open cur-
rent without a motion, but on close obser-
vation one could see that his nose was
behind a cobble-stone large enough to
make a little sunken eddy, and that his
tail curved a bit from side to side. After
mounting the first rapid near the sea he
usually spent two weeks in the pool
above, and then on ascending the second
fall he remained for a week in the next
pool, and in that way he proceeded like
any experienced traveller who has learned
how to enjoy himself and find comfort on
the road. When he first went into the
fresh water every year his colors were
startlingly silvery, gleaming in the light
that winnowed down through the crinkles
of swift water. Ten days later his back
and gill covers and fins began to become
blackish, arid his sides were a trifle less sil-
very. Two months later, at the head-
waters of the river, his colors were

94 The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

distinctly black and reddish. From the
first day of his entrance into the river the
kipper hook on his under jaw began to
grow, and his rounded sides became flat-
ter, because he did not eat while in the
river. He would often jump at a flutter-
ing miller or a little shiner at the surface
just as a kitten leaps for a ball but that
would not be called eating.

Last year while passing through the
estuary from the sea he was gilled in
Monsieur Jules's net, but he soon thrashed
himself out of that predicament, leaving a
ring mark around his neck where the net
had torn away the scales. Two years ago
he chose the wrong spot for a leap at the
falls and was thrown back over the rocks
so quickly that his side was badly torn
and one pectoral fin was split lengthwise.
So back he went down river and into the
sea until the wounds were healed, knowing
that if he remained in fresh water sapro-
legnia would grow in the injured tissues
and make him weak. He returned to the
upper waters of the river in time to find a
mate who did not object to his scars any

The Evening of Aug. i, 1895. 95

more than the German maiden objects to
the duel marks on the cheeks of her lover ;
but it was necessary for him to drive away
a ridiculous little parr and two or three
rivals, one of which locked jaws with him
and did not let go until he had damaged
his kipper hook.

This year the scarred old veteran came
up from the Gulf three weeks ago, but he
waited in brackish water below the first
rapid for a week until the temperature of
the river had risen to 50°, and then in the
first pool he did not feel much like jump-
ing for exercise or at passing flies until
the water was several degrees warmer yet.
It is hard for a salmon to keep quiet for
a very long time though, and one need
not stand by a pool many minutes to learn
if salmon are there or not.

I did not care particularly to catch this
.fine old fish just now because we had had
sport enough for one day. First I hooked
an enormous salmon that sulked at the
bottom for two hours, in spite of all my
efforts to move him ; and then when he
was beginning to tire, the hook came away

96 The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

all at once, and so easily that one won-
dered at it having held so long. Another
salmon had given me a violent chase
down the rapids and I had torn my
clothes, lost my hat, and scratched my
hands in leaping over rocks while try-
ing to follow him ; but he finally ran out
all of 1 20 yards of line, whacked my rod
straight under water, and broke away.
After that I landed two large salmon and
a sea trout. No one would crave any
more physical exertion after that sort of
work, and so Jo-mul and I had gone back
to camp.

We were sitting at the edge of the rocks
in front of camp making the smelt jump at
a cast of small flies, while Caribou Charley
cooked the young murres that he had
condescended to collect for supper, along
with a pailful of cloudberries and hairy
currants. Several smelt would dart at
the flies at once, and I told Jo-mul of the
common saying among white men that
salmon fishing spoiled a man for any other
sort of sport with the rod, and asked him
if we had not many and many a time

The Evening of Aug. i, 1895. 97

rigged up a light rod and gone to fishing
for smelt, fork-tail charrs, whitefish, sea
trout, or brook trout, while a dozen leap-
ing salmon were in sight. Then again,
after a fine salmon had been brought to
gaff, we have gone down the bay and had
no end of fun digging clams and pulling
lobsters out from under the rocks, or we
have gone up to deep water and fished
on the bottom for lake trout with a plain
vulgar hook' and sinker, when salmon
would have risen to almost any cast of
the fly in the pools. No ! I am suspi-
cious of the color of the blood of a sports-
man who is ruined by salmon fishing.
Nevertheless, a salmon is the greatest
prize that is obtained by the fisherman.

While we sat waiting for supper an
hour ago and were catching the smelts in
order to fill in all chinks of time, two or
three fish that looked like ouananiche be-
gan to leap and play a few yards out in
the stream, so I got the salmon rod out
again in order to catch one of them for
identification. The Jock Scott fly was
cast gently into the smooth gliding rapid

98 The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

water at the head of a short but noisy
chute, and when the fly rounded up and
rippled the water at the end of a straight-
ened line this great salmon unexpectedly
appeared. He advanced close up to the
fly, almost touched it with his blunt nose,
stood poised for a moment in the current,
and then turned away, making a swirl
that boiled the water up in a smooth,
round dome at the place where he had
been an instant before. He was given
time to settle back to his resting-place,
and then the fly went out to search for
him again. This time he came with a
rush, and opening a great mouth that
shut the fly in completely, he turned to
disappear again ; but feeling the hook
and the tightening line he leaped eight
feet into the air, shook his head savagely,
and bending his body into a bow struck
at the line with his tail while high in
air. The water splashed to the shore and
splattered the rocks as he splurged under
again, and then with the speed of an ex-
press train he rushed fifty yards out into
the river and made a graceful broad jump

The Evening of Aug. i, 1895. 99

of fifteen feet over the surface. Turning
sharply down stream he shot instantly
through the chute, stopping to whirl once
in the broken water, and then pulled out
a hundred yards of line so swiftly that it
fairly took my breath away before I could
jump over the rocks and follow him along
the shore. Up he went into the air again
and then back into the current, yanking
his head furiously back and forth with
regular strokes. His next move was to
march up behind a rock in deep water,
where he sulked, remaining in the same
place for ten minutes, and giving nervous
twitches on the line, which was drawn so
tightly in the water that it hummed a
tune in G minor, and cut the water so
that a little transparent sheet an inch high
stood straight up.

In thirty minutes the salmon had be-
come sufficiently tired to allow me to
guide him into shallow water near Jo-mul,
who struck him fairly with the gaff and
lifted him out upon the rock at his feet.
A beautiful fish it is, and one that re-
quired a pretty good knowledge of his

ioo The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

habits in order to take him out of the ele-
ment in which he was well equipped for
methods of escape.

As for Jo-mul, who stands there so
erect and solemn upon the rock holding
the salmon with the gaff, he too has
habits and a life history. His long black
hair is cut evenly around at the level of
his shoulders, and his straight thin nose,
high cheek-bones, and dark skin mark the
man whose ancestors were perhaps here
with the other indigenous animals. He is
not at all like a white man, although he says
that he can speak English. I asked him
if he had ever seen a moose so far north
and he replied, " Seen um be markin' on
de paper." That was an unusually good
and long answer for him. As a rule it is
necessary to ask him a question several
times before he makes any kind of an
answer in Montagnais, traders' French,
or English. He is not morose, but like
others of his race he has failed to develop
the bump of language. I do not remem-
ber to have seen him lauorh but once, and

o

that was when I asked him to cut enough

The Evening of Aug. i, 1895. 101

firewood to last for several days. It was
a good joke. Nothing appeals to an In-
dian's sense of the ludicrous like the idea
of laying up anything in advance. He
tries to imitate Caribou Charley and me
in some things, and I do not dare to leave
my tooth-brush out or he surely would try
it. He still prefers to lean over the river
Narcissus-like when parting his hair in
the morning instead of using our more
civilized mirror, which is made by sinking
a rubber coat-tail in a pan of water.

Every year in July Jo-mul comes down
to the coast and disposes of his canoe load
of furs to some trader. A fine black mink
skin is worth two dollars, so for that the
trader gives him a five-cent pipe on which
he has placed the value of two dollars.
His skins of beaver, otter, fox, marten,
lynx, fisher, wolverine, and bear are traded
off for pickles, Florida water, gunpowder,
tobacco, and the simplest necessaries in
the way of clothing and provisions, but
usually to pay the last year's debt ; and
the things that he wants are advanced to
him, for he is known as an honest Indian,

102 The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

That means that he has learned that ad-
vances will not be made unless debts are
paid. An Indian is apt to be relatively
honest. Jo-mul would probably not steal
a gold watch because he does not know
what it is good for, but it would not be
safe to leave a pound of pork near him.
He would cross himself with one hand
while purloining the pork with the other,
for the missions have not been without
their influence in this region.

Jo-mul has a wife and two children, but
his ideas of family are not troublesome,
and he would not feel so very badly if
some young brave were to run off with
his comely daughter before marriage,
especially if the young brave could furnish
food enough and would give the daughter
a bright red ribbon or two. After Jo-mul
has traded off his furs and has lain about
camp for four or five weeks the family
start off on their annual trip into the in-
terior, to come down the river in the
following year just as the salmon are
going up. Jo-mul has few motives or am-
bitions beyond those of any of the other

The Evening of Aug. i, 1895. 103

large animals of this latitude. He would
never think of making a pet of any wild
animal. He would not live a moral life
for its own reward, because there would
be some difficulty in explaining to him
the nature of that reward. He would not
be content with four meals a day if he
could get eight, and he does not feel like
working when he is full of food and wants
to sleep.

He seems to live for the purpose of
completing a round of life. One round
begins with the water bacteria which are
eaten by infusoria, which are eaten by
mollusks, which are eaten by fish, which
are eaten by Jo-mul, who will be eaten by
bacteria in turn if he is not careful in
shooting the rapids. Another round be-
gins with the land plants, which are eaten
by the caribou, which are eaten by Jo-mul,
who will be eaten by the bacteria and
turned over to the land plants again if he
is careful about shooting the rapids. Thus
will Jo-mul fill his place in the economy
of nature, and apparently there is no other
mission for him on earth,

104 The Evening of Aug. i, 1895.

The syenite rock is about the only thing
near camp which has no habits. It lies
there partly submerged beneath the sullen
current. It is waiting.

IN THE SANDY END OF

A CONNECTICUT

TOWNSHIP.

" r I ^HAT nigh mare is a cribber, is n't
J_ she, Jim ?

" Cribber ? Why goddlemitey, yes.
All the hosses up this way is cribbers ;
or most on 'em is, cause the air is so gol
darned good up here that they want to
suck 'emselves full of it and keep sucked
full, besides what they kin git into their
innards reg'lar ways. Say ! you 'd better
come up here to stay fer a spell and you 'd
git as healthy as a hoss. Whoa thar,
Jinny! Whoa thar, Lije ! Git on here
quick, you fellers. Whoa, Lijah ! Aint
this a mornin' fer trout, though ? Sling
them baskets and poles in and git fixed as
soon 's you kin."

105

106 In the Sandy End of

" Little bit frisky this morning, are n't
they, Jim?"

" Stiddy thar, Jinny ! Oh, that 's noth-
in'. I '11 run 'em up Bald Hill lickety
split and they '11 stand while we 're fishin'
after that. Say ! Look here ! Don't
let yer feet swing too fur from the front
of the waggin so 's to hit Jinny's legs."

" Is she a kicker, Jim ? "

"Kicker? Well, no; not zactly, 'less
you begin it yerself. Be a little keerful,
though. Oh, never mind 'bout movin'
back. Stay whar you be. Don't get
skeered. She won't kick 'less she 's
s'prised. I 've only jist got her, and I '11
treat her kinder kind, and bimeby she
won't never kick. Git up, Jinny !"

Jim accompanied the injunction with a
cobble-stone which he pulled out of his
side pocket, striking the mare between
the ears.

"Git up!"

Another stone from the side pocket hit
her on the neck.

" Why do you do that, Jim ? Why
don't you use your whip ? "

A Connecticut Township. 107

" Whip ! Can't use no whip on her.
I jist carry along a pocket full of stuns
and tetch her up ahead a leetle. That 's
whar she needs it. Don't need no stir-
rin' up behind. Too gol darned smart
there aready."

" Where did you buy her, Jim?"

" Buy her? I haint never bought no
hosses. Aint no use a-buyin' 'em. Traded.
Allers traded ! Leastways, most allers
traded. They 's men that '11 pay a hun-
dred dollars cash down fer a hoss, but
them folks can't get ahead none. Bought
my fust hoss, come to think. I was down
to Stony Creek and they was a-loadin' a
schooner fer York, and the feelin' come
over me all to once that I wanted to go
fur a travel, and I says to the cap'n, says I :

" ' Cap'n, what '11 you take to let me go
to York with you ?'

"'Come on, Jim,' says he, 'and help
me load up and I '11 take you down and
back if you '11 help both ways.'

" That 's how I got my start. Kinder
curis, aint it, how a feller '11 git a start from
a feelin' that comes over him and he 's in a

io8 In the Sandy End of

handy spot fur the feelin'. Well, we got
down to York, and one day while he was
a-waitin' I come to a hoss-car track in the
road, and bein' kinder curis, I follered it
up and bimeby I come to a big stable and
the gol dumbedest pile of horses that ever
you seen. Bimeby they onhitched a hoss
that come in kinder lame and dumpish,
and the hoss doctor he looked him over
and he says to the boss, says he :

" ' Sudden attack of spilin'-men-an-
cheat-us. Hoss busted,' says he.

" Then they went away, and I histed
up that hoss's off hind leg and I seen that
ere spilin'-cheat-us lodged in under the
shoe, and it wa'n't no bigger 'n a robin's
egg. I did n't pry it out just then, but I
kinder waited round, and bimeby I went
up to the boss and I says :

" ' What '11 you take fer that hoss ? '

" ' Take fifty,' says he, thinkin' he was
cheatin' me.

" Them city fellers '11 cheat you quick-
er 'n a wink. Nothin' agin you fellers,
'cause you aint thar now.

" ' Give you five,' says I.

A Connecticut Township. 109

" ' Twenty-five/ says he.

" ' Six,' says I.

" ' Give me eight and take him,' says he.

" So I give him eight and had three
dollars left in my pocket. Made it burnin'
charcoal summer before, and was lookin'
fer a chance to speckerlate, never thinkin'
't would come unexpected like that. Well,
when I got down the road I pried out that
'ere cheat-us and got the hoss aboard the
schooner and got him up here, and from
that start I 've been tradin' and tradin'
and I Ve had lots of hosses and waggins
and harnesses, besides a purty good livin'.'

" Ever get any bad horses, Jim ?"

" Bad uns? Why, no, not r-e-e-1 bad."

" How did the dashboard get knocked
out of the buggy up at the house ?"

" Kicked out, I s'pose !"

"Bad horse?"

" No ; not r-e-e-1 bad ! Can't remem-
ber jest which one it was. Long time
ago."

" What did you feed the horse, on board
the schooner?"

"Hay!"

i io In the Sandy End of

" Where did you get hay ? "

" Oh, they was a lot of it on the dock
all done up fancy. Good hay though.
Smelt of it."

"Whose hay was it?"

"Dunno!"

" I wish we could fish the old Howell
brook this morning, Jim ; but they say
that a club has bought rights and posted
it. How do you like that sort of thing
here in this part of the country?"

" Like it ? Why, fust rate. Ketched
bigger trout and more of 'em than ever
before."

" But don't you ever run across the
watchman ? "

"Oh, lordy, yes! Run acrost him
more 'n forty times."

" But did n't he stop you ?"

" Stop me?" — and Jim's voice sounded
like the sudden breaking of a bed slat—
"Stop me? Why, no. He knows I kin
lick him quicker 'n lightnin'. Allers licked
him at school when we was boys. But
I Ve got a brook all posted for you fel-
lers. Three miles on it."

A Connecticut Township. 1 1 1

" I did n't know that you owned so
much land, Jim."

" I don't own none o' that land," said
Jim ; " but you see it 's this way. Them
club fellers got a notion of comin' over
to this brook, so I went and stuck up a
lot of signs."

" But how about the owners?"

" Well, you see how it is ; the land up
here 's mortgaged 'way up, and the men
what 's on the farms thinks that the mort-
gagers put up them signs, and the mort-
gagers thinks that the men what 's on the
farms put 'em up, and bein' a leetle skeered
of each other, they don't ask no questions."

" So you did not have to pay any-
thing?"

" No ; nothin'. They aint no money up
this way to pay for things nohow, so we
hev to do the best we kin without money.
Money aint nec'ssary fer folks with heads
on 'em. It 's fer dudes. Nothin' agin
you fellers — cause — cause — praps you
haint got much on it. They was a feller
up here had two hundred and forty-six
dollars saved up, burnin' charcoal, and he

112 In the Sandy End of

was awful skeered that some un would
ketch him and git it — wuss 'n a mink with
a black hide — and so he slept over in that
charcoal hut over yender — 'way from
folks."

" Did they find him, Jim?"
"Yep!"

" Get his money?"
"Yep! Killed him."
" Was it known who did it ? "
" Yep ! Seen the feller what done it
down to the railroad station t'other day."
" But did n't they arrest him ?"
" Oh, yep ! Took him over to Hartford
and tried him fer it. Could n't prove
nothin', cause he was jest that fool fer
luck, that they wa' n't nobody lookin' on
when he done it, so he was 'quitted.
When I seen him t'other day down to
the station, I walked up to him and I
says, says I :

" ' Gabe, you know gol darned well that
you was the feller that killed Mart.'"
" What did he say to that, Jim ? "
" Oh, he says, ' Git out,' says he, and
poked me in the ribs with his thumb. He

A Connecticut Township. 113

knows me fust rate, you know. Wish
you fellers 'd go up to Hall's pond some
day and ketch some of them black bass
that was put in up there."

" Have you tried them, Jim ? "

" Yep ! Tried 'em with that purty little
trout pole you give me three years ago."

"Catch any?"

"Dunno!"

"A man usually knows whether he has
caught a bass or not."

" Well, it 's this way. You see I put on
a frog and hove him out by a good-lookin'
rock, and all to oncet they was a yell of a
yank, and I pulled my all firedest, and the
bass he pulled his all firedest, and bimeby
somethin busted, and I haint got that
purty leetle pole now. Next time I go
bassin' I '11 take along a bean pole, and a
purty gol darned stubbed one at that."

" We will write to you if we find that
we can come up again this spring for the
bass, Jim."

" 'T won't do no good to write."

"Why not?"

" Cause old Hank, the postmaster, he 's

ii4 In the Sandy End of

got a grudge agin me. Last year he sent
word over they was a letter fer me to the
post-office, and said he would n't give it to
me till I licked him fer it. He would n't
let me have it fer two weeks just to tan-
terlize me, but I found out what was in it,
cause his woman she opened it and told
some of my folks, so he wa'n't so gol

darned smart as he thought he was."
#• # * * * *

"Guess I '11 hitch up Syb to take you
fellers down to the station this mornin'.
Sorry you can't stay and git another big
mess like yest'day. Like to hev you
round. Thar 's Mary, she goes and slicks
up when you 're round jest like when I
was courtin' her. They 's lots of trout
too. Why, I ketched one over by Barnes's
t' other day that weighed a pound and a
half. Pound an! a half, wa'n't it, Mary ? "

"Two pound, plumb, James."

" And then up there to the hog hole I
ketched, 1'e's see, 't was some thirty-odd,
wa'n't it, Mary?"

" Forty-eight, James." (Loyalty, thy
name is woman !)

A Connecticut Township. 115

" Get in, boys. Springs a leetle weak
for three, but Syb don't mind if anything
busts."

" That 's a pretty mare, Jim, where did
you get her?"

''Traded! Traded with a feller over
to Madison when she was a colt. Aint
she a beaut ? "

" What does the name Syb stand for,
Jim?"

"Sybil!"

" How in the name of goodness did you
ever come to name a colt Sybil ?"

" Sybil ? Why, that was the name of
the gal of the feller I got the colt of.
Sech a gol darned purty gal, I named
the colt after her, knowin' it must grow
up beautiful with sech a name."

" Do you know what a sibyl is, Jim ?"

" No. It must be somethin' too gol
darned sweet and beautiful fer these parts,
'ceptin' as I Ve got it in that mare."

Sybil was really a most beautiful and
intelligent little mare, and Jim had made
her his pet. The tenderness that his
knotty hands displayed in managing her

n6 In the Sandy End of

and the soft voice in which he spoke to
her were very touching, and she, like a
spoiled girl, did just as she pleased, but
with the evident intention of reciprocating
Jim's affection. She wore no blinders and
went along the sandy road at any gait
that happened to please her for the mo-
ment. The little mare would leisurely jog
off to one side of the road to keep in the
shade of the maples, and then deliberately
cross over to trot in the shade of the but-
ter-nuts on the other side, if that was the
better side. She threw her head around
over her shoulder and looked straight at
Jim when he spoke to her, meanwhile not
changing her gait. She stopped a moment
to rub noses with a cow near the road and
then went on again without command.
Passing an old stone wall, Syb stopped so
quickly that we were almost pitched out,
and with ears pricked up she reached her
head over the fence to look at something.

" What is it, Jim ? " I asked.

" Woodchuck rustlin' in the leaves, I
guess. [Standing up to look.] Yep !
woodchuck ! G' long, Syb ! "

A Connecticut Township. 117

" What will you take for that mare,
Jim!"

" Take fer her ? No, sir-e-e. She aint
to sell. That 's talkin' 'bout the soul, or
leastways as near as I ever git to it.
G'long, darlin'!"

A DAY WITH THE GROUSE.

ON one of those clean, northerly,
transparent November mornings,
when the elfin frost sketchers had left the
tops of the kitchen window-panes suffi-
ciently clear to give an impressionist effect
of yellow sassafras leaves in the yard and
embers of autumn over beyond upon the
mountain side, John and I moved our
creaky old-fashioned chairs up to the
farm-house table and fortified ourselves
for the prospective hunt with hot buck-
wheat cakes and sausage gravy, with
home-made sausages that had spluttered
and burst in the frying-pan and then
turned all crunchy where their contents
had quickly browned, and finally, with a
warmer of coffee containing blobs of real
cream and doubtful sugar.

We were clad in stout canvas hunting
1x8

A Day with the Grouse. 119

suits, flannel shirts, thick hob-nailed bro-
gans, and corduroy caps ; and if any one
doubted our intentions for the day they
should have seen Don and Belle, the two
setters, as they rapped the table legs with
their tails, and poking their heads into
our laps with impatient whines looked up
with that intense expression that one sees
when the dog realizes that his master is
all ready for a hunt. Honest old Fog-
horn, the hound, sat in droop-eared dig-
nity with bowed head near the stove,
looking at us occasionally out of the
corners of his eyes and hoping that he
would be invited to follow, but knowing
full well that when we were out after
grouse it was his day to remain at home.
One who has not lived and loved with
well-bred dogs cannot appreciate their
keen perceptions and their quick divina-
tion of many of the master's thoughts and
intentions. The ordinary observer would
have said that Foghorn did not care to
go with us on that day, and that the other
dogs were wistful because such was their
habit, but not a word had been spoken

120 A Day with the Grouse.

to them and they all judged of our plans
for the day from something in our man-
ner that the gift had not been given us
to realize ourselves. Dogs seem to see
their masters' thoughts, and their de-
ductions are all made while the phi-
losopher is waiting for something more
definite ; and although the quickness of
their conclusions is antagonistic to good
analyses of our motives, they turn at
each limitation of their understanding to
a friendly supposition, and it is with a
wag of the tail instead of a growl that
they await further information. I re-
spectfully refer philosophers to the dogs.
We were not out of the door before
Don and Belle had bounced through ahead
of us, and the frightened hens about the
stone steps ran and flew ca-dark-ut-ing in
great confusion back to the barnyard and
over the fence into the orchard. A chilly
crow unhunched himself from a frosty rail
and flopped heavily along over the fields
of corn-shocks and ungathered pumpkins,
and out of the stiff frozen grass fluttered
a few migrating sparrows as we rustled

A Day with the Grouse. 121

noisily along through the windrows of
dead leaves in the path. High up on the
hill-tops the sun was just beginning to
mingle with the few brilliant leaves that
still clung to the maples, and down in
the valley a line of haze above the dark
pines marked the course of the stream
that had been so interesting to us in the
trout season. It was a rough climb
through the woods to the upper grounds
where we intended to hunt, and the air
was provocative of such energetic move-
ments that we were in a glow when the
high levels and the morning sunshine were
reached. Away to the right of us stretched
a series of beech and chestnut ridges, with
many acres of thick pines and hemlocks,
while the edges of the woodland were
lined with brush-lots of young poplars,
birches, sumacs, and witch hazel ; patches
of reddish buckwheat stubble here and
there adjoined the saplings. To the
hunter's eye buckwheat stubble is the
finishing touch of beauty in a landscape.
Festoons of grape-vines hung from the
hornbeams in the gullies, and the ground

122 A Day with the Grouse.

in many places was thickly carpeted with
wintergreens and princess pine. In the
debris of the very first crumbling log we
found a group of four wallow holes and a
loose grouse-feather that looked as though
it had been recently shaken out. Neither
Don nor Belle made any signs of game
just there, but they ranged eagerly back
and forth to the loose heaps of brush,
through clumps of sapling pines and along
the stump fence, until the rapid wagging
of Don's tail as he hesitated for a moment
in the cart-path showed that a grouse had
been along there that morning. For
several minutes Don was busy in trying
to determine the direction of the trail, but
gradually becoming convinced he started
off cautiously through the scrubby oak
bushes with elevated nose and swinging
tail. We could see his nostrils dilate and
hear him snuffing, as with half-closed eyes
his every energy seemed concentrated in
the delicate effort of catching the floating
scent. How lightly he stepped as he led
us off toward a fallen tree-top ! And then
he began to grow stiff-legged, and stopped.

A Day with the Grouse. 123

His tail straight out : every muscle rigid :
and his right foot lifted from the ground.
Belle, seeing that he had found a bird,
bounded up so hurriedly that the grouse
rushed out and disappeared behind a pine
before we could shoot. Out from under
a scrub-oak went another grouse, and
neither of the guns happened to be ready,
It was necessary to call Belle in and
scold her for being so careless, and her
drooping ears and tail showed that her
feelings were hurt more than they would
have been if we had punished her. The
direction that one of the birds had taken
led us out to a sumac thicket on a knoll.
Both dogs were making signs of game and
trying to locate the birds, when suddenly
out of the ferns at my very feet burst a
great gray cock grouse and sprang whir-
ring into the air, shaking the saplings with
his wings and whisking a circle of loose
dead leaves into the air of his wake.
The instant that the gun-stock struck my
shoulder and the trigger was simultane-
ously and intuitively pulled, the feath-
ers flew in a puff, the powerful bird

124 A Day with the Grouse.

dropped headlong through a thorn-bush,
and struck the ground with a thump,
leaving a few loose feathers hanging
lightly among the twigs, while dried thorn-
leaves rattled down from limb to limb as
they followed the bird. The empty shell
in the gun was quickly replaced by a
loaded one and Don was given the order
to fetch. How proudly he came trotting
toward us, tossing the prize upward in
order to get a better hold as he ran, and
at the same time being careful not to muss
the feathers. His eyes were not for a
moment taken from the limp grouse in
my hand until its tail had disappeared in
the capacious hunting-coat pocket.

Along the edge of a buckwheat stubble
both dogs worked ambitiously back and
forth, following first one trail and then
another until we were convinced that a
whole covey of grouse had been gleaning
there and that their tracks were so inter-
mingled that the dogs had a difficult riddle
to solve. We were making a wide detour
of the field when it was noticed all at once
that Belle was standing on a "dead point"

A Day with the Grouse. 125

at a small wisp of foxtail grass and rag-
weeds, and Don was a few yards away back-
ing her. The idea that a whole big grouse
could hide in such cover without being
visible seemed ridiculous, but we had en-
tire confidence in the two mute authorities
standing there so motionless in the stub-
ble, and as I walked up to Don a grouse
sprang like a new revelation out of the
wisp and started off with plenty of room
to gain all needful headway. The first
charge of shot loosened a couple of wing
feathers and the second shot sent the bird
bounding all in a bunch among the seedy
ragweeds. Just then two more clucking
and squealing grouse with spread tails and
half-opened wings unexpectedly appeared
and ran straight toward me, mounting on
wing so close that I could almost have
touched them with the gun. Another one
jumped from the wisp straight up high
into the air, and a moment later two red
fellows whirred away side by side low over
the field. A volcano and earthquake of
grouse ! There I stood with unloaded

«^

gun and trying so hurriedly to get two

i26 A Day with the Grouse.

cartridges into the breech that they would
not have gone into a peck measure just
then. If my efforts at being wise had
ever been so severe and so energetic as
my efforts to get those cartridges into the
breech in time for a shot, the nineteenth
century would have had its Solomon.

One of the birds scudding down the
wind past John suddenly folded itself up
in mid air, and a long shot at another so
surprised the bird that it wheeled and
alighted in a hemlock at the edge of the
field.

In brush lot and in bark slashing and
from hill-top to swale we found grouse that
day, and when in the long shadows of the
thin sunlight on a cold-waxing autumn
evening we reached the farm-house and
spread our birds out upon the woodshed
floor, the dogs, with ears full of burrs and
memories replete with good deeds, curled
up contentedly behind the stove for the
night.

The cider in the blue pitcher that was
set upon the table after supper helped to
strengthen many of the weak points in the

A Day with the Grouse. 127

yarns of the old settler who had dropped
in to tell us of the three coons that he had
found in one tree that day, and Grandad
Bradtree, leaning- his sunken cheek on the
trembling hand that balanced the cane
against the arm-chair, was encouraged to
tell again such stories of his exploits in
the good old days as are usually reserved
for grandchildren and withheld from con-
temporaries.

I know the beds of Eastern princes, and
the luxurious couches of Occidental pluto-
crats, but under the rafters of a farm-house
in western New York, where the mud
wasp's nest answers for a Rembrandt and
the cobweb takes the place of a Murillo,
there is a feather bed into which the
hunter who has killed a dozen ruffed
grouse in the day softly sinks until his
every inch is soothed and fitted, and set-
tling down and farther down into sweet
unconsciousness, while the screech owl is
calling from the moonlit oak and frost
is falling upon the asters, stocks may
fluctuate and panic seize the town, but
there is one man who is in peace.

NEPIGON AND SAGUENAY
RIVERS.

A FIVE-MINUTES' COMPARISON'.

" I "HE Xepigon River has for its source
JL a great spring which presses against
more than ninety miles of encircling rocks
in seeking for a chance to escape, and
then pours heaps of canorous water pell-
mell through a forty-mile chute straight
into diaphanic Lake Superior. If the
river stops a bit wherever there is need to
touch up the landscape with a lake, or if
it runs slowly past engaging scenery, no
one cares very much, because it makes up
for lost time in a headlong chase over the
rocks all of the rest of the way.

The Saguenay River, with its forty miles

of tannate water debouching into a dark

sullen estuary, is the result of a conference

of long rivers which meet at Lake St.

126

The Nepigon and Saguenay. 129

John and require ninety miles of sandy
circumference for the assembly. If you
would know which St. John the lake is
named after, try to cross it in a birch-bark
canoe when a question of north wind is
before the conference. The Nepigon
River, as a strong individual character,
retains its original motives and carries
into Lake Superior the same volume of
clearest cold water with which it started,
— water that makes such white foam and
spray in the rapids that the Indians could
not help calling the river the Nepi-gon, or
river-that-is-like-snow. Such a river is not
very susceptible to passing influences, and
during the whole year it may not rise or
fall more than twenty-five inches, while the
Saguenay, responding to many influential
constituents, rises and falls as many feet
in the course of two months, and not only
that, but it is warm or cold at the dictation
of the season.

The Nepigon is not afraid to show its
true nature at the outset of its career,
and it gives honest warning that it is pow-
erful. The Saguenay, on the other hand,

13° The Nepigon and Saguenay.

leaves the St. John Conference with mur-
der in its heart. Stealthily as a leopard
it noiselessly glides to the Isle d'Alma,
then it mutters and growls for a while, and
suddenly bursts out with demoniacal fe-
rocity upon the rocks in its path. If you
are a master of rivers and fear none of
them, go to the Nepigon and to the
Saguenay and see how grandly nature is
displayed along these two great "tributa-
ries of the St. Lawrence which are so
much alike upon the map and so different
in their characters. Leave behind the
pleasures of the city that are dependent
upon arts which stimulate the mind
without nourishing the soul ; where the
gardener makes the rose more and more
beautiful as he gradually forces its stamens
to become petals, until, as the queen of
flowers, it has lost the power of gener-
ation ; where the arts of civilization
stimulate the mind until it flames up in
genius and a degenerate body falls back.
Go to the Nepigon and to the Saguenay
and see what substantial things can be
found there in nature. On the Nepigon,

The Nepigon and Saguenay. 131

igneous cliffs of trap rock tower in stern
grandeur over the river-that-is-like-snow.
The dark forest growth of fir and tama-
rack, toned by poplar, birch, and round-
wood, becomes thinned and sparse on the
mountains, just as though the Oreads had
planned their forest before violent up-
heavals of the earth made ten humpy miles
out of one smooth mile, and thereby upset
their calculations. On the Saguenay — the
corrupted name for the Shagahneu-hi, or
ice-hole river, so named because the seals
used to keep many air-holes open in the
ice of the estuary — Laurentian rocks in
sombre piles lift up their covering of
coniferous and deciduous trees, which are
much like those of the Nepigon, but here
and there a fine yellow pine holds mo-
narchial possession of a jagged island, and
the trunks of the northern white birch
light up the forest aisles. An area of fos-
siliferous limestone on Lake St. John has
come to the surface, bearing evidence of
the abundance of life in Silurian days. A
devout clergyman remarked that these
fossils were never alive, but were placed

132 The Nepigon and Saguenay.

there in their present form to test our
faith, and they have done it. Moose and
caribou sometimes leave tracks among
the twin-flowers and adder-mouths along
the banks of both the Nepigon and Sague-
nay rivers, and one need not go very far
away to find abundance of such game.
Black bears swim the rivers at safe cross-
ing-places, and the voice of a gray wolf
may be heard above the sound of rushing
waters when all else under the stars is
still. Along both rivers the northern
hares furnish the principal food supply
for carnivorous animals and birds, just as
the ciscoes furnish a large food supply for
the predatory fishes of the region. Spruce
grouse and ruffed grouse fly into the bushes
near the fisherman, and look at him in
wonderment, and the cinereous owl catches
ptarmigans on the hills in winter. In the
Nepigon River brook trout find such an
abundance of food and such agreeably
cold water that they grow to an enormous
size, and are ready to spring after the fly at
almost any time of day after 10 o'clock in
the morning. Like fish in other very cold

The Nepigon and Saguenay. 133

streams, they do not rise readily in the
early morning, and the best sport may be
had with them in the middle of the sun-
shiniest day. The big 6-pounders jump
at the fly almost as eagerly as the young-
sters do, and the very largest trout are so
sleek and fat that they are delicious for
the camp table — quite different from the
mill-pond trout of warmer waters, which
lose flavor and activity as soon as they
have passed the ounces period in their
lives. Side by side with the trout are
swarms of monstrous pike (Esox lucius),
and sometimes one of these will take a
silver-doctor fly. So will the salmon trout
which lurk in the tail water of deep rap-
ids, and so will the pike-perch if one is
casting the fly at night. The Nepigon
looks like good bass water from the fish-
erman's point of view, but the bass them-
selves say that it is too cold, and I know
of only two that have been caught there.
If we leave the best trout water to itself
for a while and toss the fly over still black
reaches where the water is ever so many
fathoms deep, a surprise may come to the

i34 Nepigon and Saguenay Rivers.

surface in the form of a pale trout with
translucent nose and fins, who shows by
his colors that he lives away down in the
gloom of bottom caverns. We must not
expect to catch one of these trout, but
once in a while there comes an hour when
they are all at the surface.

Whitefish take the fly readily if one is
knowing enough to tempt them in a poli-
tic way, and they certainly belong to the
game fishes of America. They cannot
chase and capture an ordinary artificial fly,
but if we put half a dozen flies, tied on
No. 14 hooks on a single leader, and drop
this affair lightly among the fins that are
circling about at the surface in the even-
ing, and keep it perfectly still, pretty soon
the whitefish will move up to it and try
to pick off the small flies as daintily as a
red deer nips a lily bud.

Although there are half a dozen species
of fish that will rise to the fly in the Nepi-
gon, the chief game fish of the river is
first and last the red-spotted square-tailed
brook trout. In the Saguenay the chief
game fish is the ouananiche, or so-called

Nepigon and Saguenay Rivers. 135

landlocked salmon. This is the inland
salmon that is found in many lake streams
from Maine to Labrador, if the streams
contain smelts. Ichthyologists find the
landlocked salmon anatomically much like
the salmon that goes to the sea, but
the ouananiche are content to remain
with the food supply that is in sight
in fresh water ; just as certain people who
might be important in the city prefer to
remain small in the village, because they
are satisfied with the opportunities in
sight, though anatomically they are the
same folks. It is principally a question of
size of opportunity.

In the Saguenay we find the same mon-
strous pike and the same pike-perch and
whitefish as in the Nepigon, but the
trout are absent. There are plenty of
trout in the tributary streams which are
not inhabited by the ouananiche, but the
two fish rather avoid each other because
they are such close rivals. Both are mag-
nificent, but they cannot see it in each
other.

The guides of the Nepigon are for the

1 36 Nepigon and Saguenay Rivers.

most part Chippewa Indians or half-breeds,
who are willing enough to have visitors
enter their domain, but who are not very
amiable. Such is their nature. They do
not even make friends of their dogs, who
would gladly love them and forgive all of
their failings. A stray Indian dog of the
most pathetic yellow color came to our
camp one day, and when we tried to pat
his head the poor little fellow spread his
legs apart and braced himself, thinking
that we were trying to push him over. He
did not know that there was any such
thing as affection in the whole round
world ; but we developed that latent trait
for him, and glad indeed was he to frnd at
the end of a week that his tail had a use
and that it could wag.

On the Saguenay the guides are hardy,
polite French-Canadians, simple in their
ways, and delighted to have a chance to
show their hospitality if we visit their
humble homes. In their relations with
each other every man stands on his real
merits and accepts the position that is
given him in the estimation of his con-

Nepigon and Saguenay Rivers. 137

freres. Monsieur E. R. Dutou cannot block
up a shaky reputation by signing himself
Eelnavo Reanne Dutou. He cannot ele-
vate the neighborhood by forcing his name
under society in the form of a wedge as
E. Reanne Dutou ; nor can he send the
chain-shot name of Eelnavo Reanne-
Dutou hurtling through a startled public
if he is personally deficient in powder.

The Nepigon has completed its duty
when the tribute of waters is freely paid
to Lake Superior, but the Saguenay
avariciously makes its current pass
through a long estuary before deliver-
ing its property to the sea. The es-
tuary is full of weird interest. The
sombre current, the beetling mountains,
and the cold northern air are all in keep-
ing. White whales gleam out of the dark
flood in striking contrasts of color. A
beluga is not " sort of white," but is one
of the most beautiful of white animals, the
quality of his coloring reminding one of
the soft, supple white of a pure white
stallion.

At Tadousac, with its lofty terraces of

133 Nepigon and Saguenay Rivers.

shifting dunes, the Saguenay joins the St.
Lawrence grudgingly, and the reddish
waters push far out into those of the
greater river before their moroseness is
tamed.

A NOTE ON TANNATE WATER.

Wishing to have an explanation for the
reddish stain of many northern streams, I
wrote for information to the Department
of Agriculture at Washington and at Ot-
tawa. From Washington came the reply
that no information on that subject was
obtainable. From Ottawa I received a
personal letter from Secretary H. B.
Small, who kindly stated that while no
definite answer could be given, it was his
impression that the stain was due to the
action of tannin in the water, and that the
question would be referred to the chemists
and botanists of the Department of Agri-
culture of Canada. A report from Chief
Chemist F. T. Schutt contained analyses
of Ottawa River water showing that the
coloring of that river was largely due to

Nepigon and Saguenay Rivers. 139

peaty matter held in suspension, but there
is no peat on some of the reddest streams
that I have fished, so acting upon the sug-
gestion of Secretary Small I made experi-
mental test-tube tannates of iron and of
manganese in weak aqueous solution. The
iron tannate was at first redder than stream
water and the manganese tannate was too
smoky. A combination of equal parts of
solution of iron tannate and of manganese
tannate gave at first too smoky a color,
but after standing exposed to the light
for a few hours an abundant flocculent
precipitate formed in all of the test tubes,
and all of the solutions assumed a tint
quite characteristic of that of the streams.
This stain was little changed at the end of
two weeks. Rain water coming in con-
tact with dead tannin-bearing trees and
plants would take tannin into solution,
and this solution percolating through a
soil containing iron or manganese would
make highly colored tannates of the met-
als before reaching a stream. Even in
peaty waters the color could be due in
part to the presence of tannates. It was

Nepigon and Saguenay Rivers.

a pleasure to feel that my nice red streams
were not unclean, and that they apparently
represented nothing more than a pretty
reaction in Nature's laboratory. It is true
enough that nothing in science is unclean,
but a trout is particular and would a little
rather know that the tinting of his water
came from neat tannates of iron and man-
ganese.

THE NUMBER NINE AS A TALE
VARNISHER.

" I ^HE number nine is apparently the
JL numeral of hyperbole. It is used in
the place of a lesser numeral in a careless
way to fill gaps in the memory of the
story-teller, and it is also employed inten-
tionally for impressive effect.

Curiously enough the use of the num-
ber nine for purposes of exaggeration has
been employed since early days in history.
One's attention having been attracted to
the subject, it is a source of surprise to
observe to what frequent use the chosen
numeral is put.

A boatman who takes me out on hunt-
ing and fishing excursions is in the habit of
using the number nine so often in speak-
ing of the numbers or weight of fish and
game that the listener soon perceives that
141

H2 The Number Nine.

he is allowing the numeral in question to
stand for a lesser number of birds, or
pounds of fish. In my boatman's inaccu-
rate memory the number nine rounds out
the bag to a satisfactory extent.

Beyond my amusement at this man's
fibs, the subject caused no reflection until
one day when off for a walk I met a man
who had not succeeded in killing any snipe
on that day but who said that he had
killed nine on the previous evening. A
little farther on a man who was fishing for
bass said that he had caught only nine.
On asking him to let me see them he said
that they were in a scap net in the spring
where they would keep cool, and on lift-
ing out the net I found seven bass. The
fisherman then decided that his wife must
have come down and taken two of them
to the house for dinner without his know-
ing it. Before reaching home that day I
found a man who had killed nine ducks
before breakfast just across the way from
the boat-house. It then occurred to me
that I was on the verge of an observation,
and there came to mind at once a number

The Number Nine.

of familiar nines that have been handed
down to us. A stitch in time saves nine.
Nine tailors make a man. A nine-days'
wonder. A cat has nine lives. A cat
o'nine tails. The nine days' fast. The
nine-days' prayer. Ninebark is the name
of a plant, Spir<za opulifolia, in which the
bark separates into several layers. Nine
killer is the name of a shrike, Collurio
borealis, which suspends several small
objects of prey upon thorns and twigs.
Nine-day fits is the name for a disease,
Trismus nascentium. Nine was the
number of books that the Sibyl laid be-
fore Tarquin. The Muses were nine.

We can almost formulate a law that
when an exaggerator deals with numerals
ranging up to eight he instinctively finds
that the number nine represents the im-
aginative value of such numerals. One
can often take up a copy of a daily
newspaper and find that reporters are
fond of the number nine. The follow-
ing clippings are to the point. While
the number nine is used by various classes
of people hyperbolically, it is most often

144 The Number Nine.

heard when sportsmen are relating their
tales, and it occurs so persistently in the
sportsmen's papers that I instinctively
glance over game and fish reports before
reading them for the purpose of picking
out the nines. Three and seven are
favorite numbers, but are not used like
nine for hyperbole.

"NINE KNOWN TO BE KILLED.

"FIFTEEN OTHER MINERS BURIED IN THE YORK FARM
COLLIERY NEAR POTTSVILLE.

" ANOTHER TERRIBLE MINE EXPLOSION IN THE READING
COAL FIELD.

" The Cause of the Disaster Unknown, but it is Supposed that
the Miners Struck a ' Feeder' and Ignited the Gas with
their Lamps — Women and Children at the Mine's Mouth
— The Work of Rescue Pushed Rapidly.

" [SPECIAL TO THE ' WORLD.']

" POTTSVILLE, PA., July 23. — York Farm Colliery,
situated about two miles from this city, was the
scene of a terrible explosion about noon to-day.
Eight men are known to have been killed outright,
and it is believed that fifteen more have suffered
the same fate. Those known to have been killed
are as follows :

" i. John Harrison, of Wadesville (fire boss) ;
leaves a widow and four children.

The Number Nine. H5

" 2. Thomas Jones, Minersville ; married.
" 3. William Jones, Minersville ; single.
" 4. William Wehman, Minersville.
" 5. James Hartzel, Llewellyn.
" 6. George Kreiss, Middle Creek.
" 7. Herman Werner, St. Clair ; leaves a widow
and eight children.

" 8. Anthony Putchlavage, Pottsville.

" Those known to have been injured are :

" Anthony Stock, boy, leg broken and burned ;

" NINE PERSONS WERE KILLED, AND THE
INJURED LIST IS A LONG ONE.

"A Dense Fog Prevailed at the Time, and the Accused En-
gineer Claims he could not See the Signals — Rear Coach
of the Passenger Train Smashed, and Few of the Travellers
Escaped Uninjured — List of the Dead.

" [SPECIAL TO THE ' WORLD.']

" BOSTON, MASS., Sept. 13. — To a dense fog and
apparent carelessness on the part of the engineer of
the freight train is to be charged the fatal accident
on the Fitchburg Railroad shortly before n o'clock
last evening, at West Cambridge, by which eight
were killed and many injured.

" The dead are :

" i. Adams, Miss Margaret, 35 years, Water-
town.

" 2. Barnes, John H., 61 years, Newtown.

" 3. Feyler, Miss Rhita, 23 years, Waltham.

146 The Number Nine.

"4. Hudson, John, 51 years, Watertown.

" 5. Lane, John, 46 years, Watertown.

" 6. Merrifield, H. F., Watertown.

" 7. Raymond, Leon O., freight brakeman,
Winchendon.

" 8. Sullivan, Standish P., 56 years, East Water-
town.

" Following is a complete list of the injured.

" NINE HAT FACTORIES REOPENED.

"BUT IT IS SAID THAT FEW OF THE OLD EMPLOYES HAVE
RETURNED TO WORK.

"[BY TELEGRAPH TO THE * HERALD.']

" DANBURY, CONN., Jan. 25, 1894. — Nine of the
twenty hat factories that have been closed two
months by a lockout of their employes reopened
this morning. The manufacturers refuse to tell
how many of their late employes returned, but the
Executive Committee of the unions places the total
number at twenty-two. The firms that reopened
their factories and attempted to resume operations
were: i, C. H. Merritt & Son ; 2, White, Tweedy &
Smyth ; 3, W. Beckerle & Co. ; 4, John W. Green ;
5, D. E. Lowe & Co.; 6, T. Brothwell& Co. ; 7, E.
A. Mallory & Sons ; and 8, T. C. Millard & Co.
Several of the firms started work in some depart-
ments, and all agree that they will be running in all
departments next week."

The Number Nine. 147

"$900 FOR ONE MUSHROOM.

" AN AMATEUR GROWER RECOUNTS HIS COSTLY EXPERIENCE.

" ' What do you say to a little roast duck and ap-
ple sauce ? ' Jones asked of a reporter, looking
over the bill of fare after they had seated them-
selves in the restaurant.

" 'Too rich/ the reporter answered. 'Why not
beefsteak and mushrooms ? '

" ' Anything but mushrooms ! ' Jones exclaimed.
'The last one I ate cost me something over $900,
and I 'm under a . . . "

"... near the east shore. He has recovered
nine bodies from Cayuga Lake and as many more
from Seneca Lake."

" Last week I found nine coveys of chickens
within a half-mile of each other. On an eighteen-
mile drive I ...

" . . . any Warren Street school-boy can solve.
You have a divisor, quotient, and remainder, now
find the dividend — that fish measures exactly 9 ft.
in length."

. . . dashed over an old log. The bait
was no sooner out of sight than it was caught and I
landed a g-in. trout. Then I began to think how I
could carry them all home and . . .

. . . neighborhood had skinned out the
pheasants very materially ; in fact Mr. Crawford

148 The Number Nine.

told us that he had killed only the day before nine
pheasants over the same grounds that we hunted,
and we only got four ..."

"Yesterday a fisherman caught nine bass in a
forenoon's fishing on Ballast Reef, and the news
was quickly circulated among the disappointed
visitors, with the result of inducing several of them
to stay over another day to ...

. . . the ' bar,' as the strip of sand known
as Fire Island is called. Mr. William Ryan landed
a nine-pounder the other day while trolling near the
light-house. Mr. Ryan is very fond of fast horses,
and is one of the most expert . . .

"Two peddlers met in front of a nine-story tene-
ment-house in New York. ' How is business,
Aaron ? ' — ' Very good, indeed. And how is it
with you ? ' — ' A woman just called me from the
top story of this tenement. I ...

"... that Jocko Lake furnishes unusually
good fishing. Sometimes a single line is rigged
with nine hooks, and, if left down a short time
when the trout are biting freely, will often secure
nine trout, or a fish on each hook, at a single time."

" Hoi' Joe he '11 come any place where dere be
some folkses, he '11 beegin holler, ' Any one man
want see nine rattlin snake, for twanty-fav cen',
jomp on de woggin.'

" Den w'en you '11 gat on for look, hoi' Joe he '11
stroke it

The Number Nine. 149

' ' If you will come with me about a mile out in
the country, I will introduce you to the widow
Sneider, now an old lady. The widow Sneider
will tell you that on one morning she counted 900
(nine hundred) wagon-loads of bullheads on their
way from the geyser below the dam.' "

" Mack turned to the bottom of the boat, where the
three fish lay — a big old hook-jaw and two small
ones, and picked up the smallest, rinsed him till he
glistened, and hung him in the air — about 9 in. of
trout. Then a howl of derision went up and they
put on exhibition a string of ...

"MR. ROBERTS — I do not think the winninish
and land-locked salmon are the same by any means.
Why is it we never get the winninish any larger ?
We get the salmon weighing 25 Ibs., but the winni-
nish never weigh over 5 Ibs.

" MR. BRACKETT — I have seen them weighing 9
Ibs."

"From Pueblo the report says that nine men
have been killed, while the operator at Rouse Junc-
tion places the number at five, and this is confirmed
by the manager of a mine at Rouse ; while Trini-
dad states that only one man, a Deputy Sheriff, was
slain. Everything favors the death of at least nine
men ..."

" Our wood-sawyer Willis, whose testimony differs
from all others, has, notwithstanding his lack of
adherents, much better proof of his position, for,

150 The Number Nine.

when questioned, he not only affirmed that 'th*
jays tote " trash " nine times ev'ry Friday t' make
th' fire hotter to burn up we's souls with, in the
" Bad Place," ' but that he has actually seen them
engaged in the business."

EN KLAPJAGT PAA DANSKE
FJELDE.

THE gray haze of a November morn-
ing made a monochrome with the
gray walls and paved streets of Denmark's
capital, as Dr. Warming and I with our
guns and canvas suits and big boots,
stepped into our carriage in Vesterbro-
gade and rattled off past the early milk-
man with his bumping, thumping cans,
and past the homeward-bound gambler,
who was damp and limp from long ex-
posure to night air.

Uncas, the setter, we had left whining
and barking and pawing at the door, and
my heart went out in pity for the poor
fellow as my mind reverted to earlier days
and a little red school-house beneath the
butternut trees in a small Connecticut
village. A loose clap-boarded, lichen-

152 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

blotched school-house in which I myself
could have whined and barked and pawed
at the door when the gentians by the
brookside were nodding toward the musk-
rat tracks in the sand, and when the
ruffed grouse in freedom walked and flew
whither they would in the gay-colored
breezy autumn forest. Yes ! I could sym-
pathize with Uncas now. We were going
on a drive hunt, and knew that the ambi-
tious setter could not resist the temptation
to follow if a sleek-limbed hare should
shake its tail in his face and challenge him
for a run. I had hunted deer in the Royal
Forest, had shot partridges on the private
estates of wealthy landowners, and in fact
had enjoyed every luxury in the way of
shooting that my Danish friends could
furnish, with the exception of the drive
hunt which had been arranged for the
day of which I write.

We reached the suburbs of Copenhagen
and smelled the rich salt air from the
reedy marshes just as the haze in the east
began to grow coppery, and the peeps of
the small birds fluttering from the hedges

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 153

by the wayside told of the beginning of
their day. Flocks of sparrows were al-
ready feeding in the stubble, and their
chirrups sounded clear and loud through
the crisp morning air. The white frost
on the fences sparkled on the eastern side
of the way, and the heavy-framed laborers
with wooden shoes, carrying agricultural
implements on their shoulders, bowed po-
litely to us as they passed on their way to
work. Broad meadows stretched out to
the right and to the left. Fields of yellow
wheat stubble, of green and gray turnips,
and of red cabbage dotted the hillsides.
Here and there stood a dark Norway
spruce tree or a clump of beech trees. The
air felt just as Pennsylvania air feels, and
the groups of apple and pear and cherry
trees might just as well have been stand-
ing in somebody's back yard in Massa-
chusetts ; but nevertheless there was a
something different, an indescribable for-
eignness about the scenery which im-
pressed me constantly and pleasantly.

My enthusiastic companion, who spoke
no English, and whom I constantly ad-

154 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

monished to speak slowly, would start off
on an enraptured strain about prospects
every few minutes, in the same way as
Sam and I encourage each other when
the ruffed grouse at home are fat and
the chestnuts shine in plump brownness
through the yellow and crumply leaves
under foot. Thistles and plantain and
clover grew with familiar grasses along
the road, and shocks of corn were waiting
to be husked. A little way ahead a high
thatched windmill swung its long arms
slowly around in the light breeze, and
over the top of a hill to the right the
ends of another windmill's arms appeared
and disappeared at regular intervals.
Every now and then a big white and
black magpie slid from a tree overhead
as we jogged along, or a flock of lead-
colored crows (Corvus cornix) changed
fence-posts and cawed a recognition. Over
the bay long lines of geese were cleaving
the air with waving wings, and an occa-
sional mallard or snipe settled in among
the feathery-topped rushes near us.

The sun was beginning to soften the

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 155

air of the perfect autumn morning when
we espied the group of jolly Danes who
were waiting at the place of rendezvous.
There were Ole Larsen and Lars Olesen,
and Neils Holmsen and Holm Nielsen,
and Asmus Rasmussen and Rasmus As-
mussen, and Ask Bjoerken, and Axel Ha-
gerup, and Olof Qvist, Hjelt Raavad, and
Sell Maag, and Hjalmer Bjoernsen, and a
lot of others whose names have in some
unaccountable way slipped my mind.

Twenty or thirty flaxen-haired, strong-
waisted boys wearing home-made clothes
and heavy wooden shoes, carried wooden
clappers and old tin pans and other racket-
producing implements. The noise part
of the hunt was to be left to the responsi-
bility of the boys, and never was respon-
sibility carried more lightly. There were
hunting suits of corduroy, and hunting
suits of canvas, and hunting suits of
business suits there. There were Eng-
lish guns with shoulder-straps, and Belgian
guns with shoulder-straps, and American
guns with shoulder-straps : and all these
straps wrinkled the coats of their respective

i56 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

owners as the hunters stood about chat-
ting in Danish and preparing for the start.
Many of the men could speak German
and French, and it was surprising to find
that many who had had little opportunity
to speak English were able to carry on
conversation in that tongue.

A few minutes were spent in making
arrangements, and then we formed in a
line out across the fields, the hunters
about two gunshots apart and the boys
sandwiched in between. There we stood
in picturesque style, the fox-tail grass and
and the red-flowered wild poppies and the
seedy pig weeds glistening about our feet
with melting frost, while every one impa-
tiently awaited the signal to start. Sud-
denly a bugle blast rang out along the
line, and at the same instant the boys be-
gan a lively clapping and clattering, and
the shooters shouted in glee to each other,
as with cocked guns and accelerated heart-
beats we began a military march toward
the horizon.

From under the very feet of Stjerne on
my left an enormous hare bounds out like

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 157

a mule struck by a locomotive, and with
ears laid back and short tail bobbing be-
gins to measure off the ground in rods.
A No. 10 roar calls out for him to halt,
and through the smoke we see the hare
tumbling and rolling and kicking sand
and grass into the air. A boy runs for-
ward, and grabbing the heavy animal by
its hind legs throws it over his shoulder
and hurries back to the line. A hare
weighs as much as a shotgun, but no boy
ever felt too tired to carry one of them.
Another flash further down the line, and
another an instant later, excite the boys
to the development of a tin pandemonium.
There goes a hare which was not hit
and three dogs start after him at once.
Over the meadow they go at a tremendous
rate, the hare hardly touching the ground
with his feet, but in a brown and white
line of waving motion leading the canines
easily. Were he to keep straight on at
this rate he would be in Moscow in time
for luncheon, but playful in his fleetness he
turns, and circling back runs almost up to
Hvide, who strikes him in the fore quarter

158 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

with a stray shot. Off he scurries, handi-
capped, with one of the dogs close at his
heels ; but it seems as though a bar of
steel prevented the dog from gaining the
last necessary foot of distance, while the
hare bounds up and down so fast that I
wonder why he does n't shake his head off
or fray the end of his tail. Hares are put
together with strings, and this one does
not even shake an ear loose. The shooters
hold their breaths in their intense inter-
est. Suddenly the hare doubles, and
the dog in the funniest kind of a way
goes sprawling several yards past before
he can acquire the saw-horse stiff-legged-
ness which he requires for stopping. An-
other dog springs open-mouthed on the
hare, but he opens his mouth too widely
or something of the sort, because the hare
seemed to pop right through him and
come out smiling. The third dog joins the
first one, and together they dash furiously
through the grass and out across the
ploughed field. The hare misses his
footing and a gleam of white belly fur
appears for an instant as he rolls on a

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 159

furrow. The dogs make a dive for him,
but they are too simultaneous and stand
themselves up like three muskets on an
armory floor. The hare has all of the
room and time that he wants, and leaves
the dogs standing as pigeon-toed and dis-
couraged as a man with a broken collar-
button on a hot evening at the theater.
A puff of smoke and a loud bang are fol-
lowed by a reaping of grass leaves about
the hare, and the dogs have an oppor-
tunity to "quit their fooling." It seems
as much a pity to let off that hare's energy
as it does to waste the steam from an en-
gine at the end of a day's work.

As we start on again Bjoernstjerne
quickly jumps around and fires into the
turnip leaves through which we have just
passed, bagging a hare and half a dozen
turnips, but letting a boy get off as a fast
driver to the right without hitting him.
Notwithstanding the noise and distur-
bance the hare had lain so close that he
was passed unobserved and might have
escaped if he had allowed us to do the de-
parting instead of trying to do part of it

160 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

himself. Division of labor has its disad-
vantages. Ploughed land seems to be the
best for hares, and every few minutes one
goes bounding out from a furrow and
vaulting from one hummock to another.
Occasionally one will jump wild but the
dogs usually manage to get him back to one
of the hunters. All at once the clappers
stop their racket and every one looks to see
what game is coming. A couple of big
wood-pigeons are bearing for us bow on.
Nearer they come and larger they grow,
until it is too late for them to pass — put
their tails as hard to port as they may.
Their white-lined wings go with misty
speed and they spring away from each
other overhead. Three or four guns
belch forth rolling volumes of smoke, and
the hurtling storm of lead perforates
atmosphere and pigeons alike. Down
come both birds together, twisting and
whirling and losing downy feathers as
they fall. Little straw-colored Harold
runs out and brings in the biggest bird,
wiping the blood from its bill with his
fingers and then wiping his fingers on his

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 161

pantaloons — just as he does for his own
chubby nose. He is anxious to carry the
bird and I tell him he must be very careful
with it as I want the skin to stuff. Such
obedient carefulness as he displays one
seldom sees in a boy, and when he is
trudging through a wet spot he holds
the bird over his head where the saw-
grass won't muss it, until tripping up on
a willow root the poor little fellow snaps
shut like a jackknife and pokes the
pigeon so deep down in the mud with
one knee that the saw-grass turns green
with envy.

Here comes a short-eared owl from the
marsh. Swinging along with soft noise-
less flip flops he skims the perfumed air
from the aster tops, and carelessly wafts
himself into our dangerous midst. The
opportunity is too good an one for Sven-
sen to resist.

The clappers are again quiet as a mal-
lard duck flying high passes over the line
on his way to some small inland pond which
he knows about. Half a pound of shot
goes up after him, but he points his bill

1 62 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

toward the heavens and winnows the air
finer than ever with his stout whistling
pinions. Hardly has the smoke stopped
sifting through the poplar sprouts ahead
before a pair of pretty little blue doves
dart past like arrows. One, two, three
shots and one dove is down ; four, five,
six, seven shots and the second one
tumbles into the clover. How smooth
their feathers are, and what delicately
moulded heads and dainty red feet they
have !

" Smukke dove ! Saa lille og nydelig,"
says big Waldemar, as he brings one in
in his hand.

It does n't take long for the sun to
reach the noon-mark in Danish November,
and it gets there before one really feels
that Phoebus dare stand up straight. A
wagon which has been following us slowly
through the meadows now drives up and
the hunters and boys brush each others'
ears with their elbows as they help them-
selves to the cheese and beer and boiled
eggs, and other luxuries which the wagon
contains.

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 163

A small ravine, on the grassy banks of
which Vikings probably sat on grasshop-
pers and sharp stones just as we do
to-day, runs through the fields near
our halting place. We pull the crooked,
stiff hares out straight, smooth their
fur, and lay them in heaps by our sides.
We toss lunch tidbits to the dogs, light
pipes and cigars, kick our heels into
the sod, throw egg-shells at the boys,
and joke and laugh until the uneasy
members of the party suggest that we be
off again. The dogs notice the first
movement, and in exuberant spirits leap
over their masters, and over each other,
and bark in good plain English. This time
the line of march extends down towards
the sea. More hares spring up and die,
ephemerally. Another short-eared owl
and another pair of doves find that our
influence was more reaching than they had
thought. We are approaching a series of
sand knolls which are covered with tall,
dry, sparsely growing grass. The clap-
pers remain quiet. A word of caution is
passed along the line.

164 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

Hardly have our feet begun to crunch
the loose sand when a covey of twenty
partridges bursts out of the grass with an
explosive rush of wings, and spreading
their ruddy tails widely, and crying quirlp-
quirlp, quirlp-quirlp, in shrill, quail-like
tones, they lengthen out into a straggling
flock and head for the marsh. Poulsen,
who is nearest to the birds, coolly stops
one of them with each barrel, but Iversen,
who tries to kill the whole bevy at once,
fails to get any of it. Two men off on
the left pick out four passing birds, and
the rest of the partridges, after a rapid
flight of a few hundred yards, sail off on
curved wings and scatter singly among
the tussocks of grass. A bird which
stayed behind flies up almost at my feet
with a startling whirr, but he joins the
minor part of the flock. The scattered
patridges lie in a territory which belongs
to a distant part of our line.

The sand knolls crossed, we reach the
marsh, but on we go through the sloppy
reeds and splashy grass holes as though
we were on a board floor. In goes little

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 165

Ivan just ahead of me, splattering the
water with his heavy shoes, and sprink-
ling it over his fox-skin cap and home-
made blue blouse. In go Bjoerken and
Jansen and Raavad. Out go a snipe
and a fox and a duck. Snipe jump up on
all sides and zig-zag off " skaiching " husk-
ily, just as they do when Culver and I
flush them from the rich juicy ground of
a sweet New Jersey swamp.

The marshes here look very much like
our own marshes at home, and any
one not a botanist would have difficulty
in determining from the surroundings
whether he were in New Jersey or in this
far north Sjaelland. The ducks are rather
wild and they usually manage to get out
of the way of our noisy party before we
get within range of them. Now and then
a single mallard will lie concealed under
the fallen sedge until we are close upon
him, and then with loud quacks and swish-
ing wings he tries to escape.

The daylight is fading rapidly and by
four o'clock it will be too dark to shoot.
Working back toward the hills in broken

1 66 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

line we pass the house of a peasant family
and my friend Dr. Warming and I stop
for a moment to see the place. The one-
story house with whitewashed stone and
mortar walls is built to surround a square
court-yard. A single large gateway leads
through the south wall of the building into
this court, in the middle of which latter
a high wooden pump is surrounded by
ducks and geese and chickens. The court
is cobble-stoned, and pretty green mosses
run off along the damp crevices between
the stones. Several doors open into this
central yard. The few small windows are
set deeply in the walls of the house. The
high-peaked roof of two-foot-thick straw
thatching is covered with broad patches of
rich green moss. Part of the house is the
barn, and the horses, cows, wagons,
poultry and family all go and come
through the opening in the south wall of
the building. Two or three dark Norway
spruce trees spread their bottle-green
branches over the house, and the contrast
with the whitewashed walls is a striking
one. Several lead-colored crows flew up

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 167

on the thirty-foot-high straw stack by the
barn as we approached, and they now sat
cawing at us within easy stone shot.

We are greeted by the children, who
pull off their caps politely and then rattle
their wooden shoes on the cobbles as they
run off to their mammas in the doorways.
Strong, handsome, yellow-haired children,
with bright faces and clear gray eyes. I:
looked in at a school window one day and
the whole room seemed to be lighted up
with a mellow glow of yellow hair. All
Danish children have to be strong. The
weak ones die off when they try to
learn the language, and like Connecticut
River shad, only the most robust are able
to surmount the difficulties which beset
their way.

Doctor and I, on invitation, step into a
simply-furnished room, with white^sanded
floor, and sit down by the square table in
straight-backed chairs. Our host is de-
lighted when he hears that I am a Yankee,
and he wishes to bring out the house-
hold penatesin bottles. Turning to little
Maren, who stands bashfully covering up

1 68 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

two-thirds of her grin with a fold of her
mother's dress, I say in my most enticing
Danish, " Kom him lille pige, og sit paa
mit knae. Jeg skal ikke gjoere digondt."
But my pronunciation gives her a terrible
fright, and, disappearing from sight in
the dress like a young kangaroo in its
mamma's waist, she begins to sob. A
looking-glass hangs on the wall, together
with two or three highly colored litho-
graphs representing "The Girl of the
Period," "The Old Oaken Bucket" and
"The Pleasures of the Country," etc.
Several mottoes worked on perforated
paper with bright-colored worsted are
stuck up here and there, but one can't
read the words any better than he can
read the same in worsted English. I
guess likely they say " God bless our
home," and things like that. A large
Jerome clock stands on top of the un-
painted cupboard in one corner of the
room, and from poles overhead are hung
dried herbs. A wooden bracket by the
looking-glass holds the usual comb, which
needs false teeth, and the loose-backed

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 169

hair brush, which has spanked some boy
too hard.

It is time to go. As I step to the stone
threshold, the lord of the manor extends
a hand like the hand of Providence, and
engulfing my own in a maelstrom of fin-
gers, he works my arm up and down in
the same manner as he does an eight-foot
pump-handle out in the court. I escape
in fairly good condition, however, and
amid profuse good-byes we go out through
the big gate and into the field of tall, curly-
leaved green cabbage to join the straggling
hunters who are preparing a line for one
more trip across the fields.

All is ready, and together we advance
in imposing array, each man anxious to
add just a little more game to his list.
Every few minutes a big hare makes a
sudden spurt, and tries to kick the world
around faster on its axis, but he is stopped
in time to save the time of day. A flock
of partridges make the trembling dry
grass wave in little swirls, as the birds,
with a mighty spring, launch out into the
air right near us. Glass-ball shooters

1 7° En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

would have instinctively yelled out
" broke " if they had seen the feathers
start when four or five of the birds sud-
denly became noiseless in mid-air.

It is almost dark when we reach the
road and take a short cut for the old inn
of Valdby Kro. A fox runs out into the
field in the distance, and I make every
one laugh by my pronunciation of his
Danish name " raev." They say that the
word which I use sounds like the Danish
name for a boot target. Two or three of
us try to scramble over the rickety fence
at the back of the inn, but a sample dog,
— a Great Dane, — is waiting for us on the
other side, and as my friend says that it
hurts to have a leg pulled off by a dog of
this size, we decide to disappoint the dog,
and let him wait for somebody else. I don't
care how prosperous a hotel may be, it is
bad policy for the landlord to keep a dog
which destroys customers before they have
paid any bills. Inside the hotel guns* are
stacked and hung up in the reception
room, and hats and heavy coats follow
suit, Over in one corner is a great heap

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 171

of hares, boys, birds, and dogs. Every-
one is happy, and securely seated with
his glass of lager — of cool, cream-foamed
lager which trickles over the edge of the
mug, and mingles with the misty con-
densed moisture on the outside — is telling
his neighbor confidentially just how it
was that he had the good luck to kill most
of the game bagged during the day.

A smile born of light hearts and lighter
stomachs seems to flash across the room
when the dining-room bell gives the sig-
nal for the shuffling of heavy boots to
commence. The tables are creaking with
solid sections of brown, juicy, steaming
roasts, and piles of mealy potatoes envel-
oped in hot fog, and long white platters of
whole salmon through whose tender torn
skin the pink flakes and streaks of white
fat look all ready for the limpid golden
butter-sauce which stands in the brimming
full dishes near by. Tall handsome Dan-
ish girls are running hither and thither with
chicken soup for this man, and hare soup
for that man, and extricating order from
the chaos on the table with a marvellous

1 72 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

degree of skill. Good nature is rampant,
and the fast delivered hearty speeches are
followed by rousing echoing cheers. Cries
of " skol ! skol ! " follow every toast in
which the Yankee is mentioned, with a
vigor which shows how deep and real their
feelings of hospitality are, and men come
from the distant tables to express friendly
sentiments toward America and Ameri-
cans in general.

An hour passes by, and the tide of
speech gradually subsides. The stage of
quiet enjoyment is ushered in with the
blue-flaming plum-pudding ; and coffee
with cream melts all dispositions into one
easy flowing current of serene content-
ment. Snatches of Danish song which
have been idly travelling about the table
for several minutes, begin to join forces as
we light fragrant cigars and pipes, and
lean back lazily and stretchful in our
chairs.

While others sing, I pull from my
hunting coat-pocket the old battered
meerschaum, and fill it with yellow, fragile
grained "Lone Jack." That dear old

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 173

meerschaum that I have smoked by my
campfire in the Adirondack forest, while
the birch log sizzled and snapped, and fit-
ful gleams of red flame lighted up the
form of the strong antlered buck which
was drawn up on the moss by my side.

The same fond pipe that I have smoked
in the evening light while I sat with Sam
on the threshold of a Pennsylvania farm-
house, and the October breeze whirled
the dead leaves about our day's load of
ruffed grouse, woodcock, and quail, and
toyed with the wavy locks of our tired
and sleepy setters.

The same beloved meerschaum that I
have smoked on a Connecticut June
noontime in a sunny, ferny corner of the
rail fence among the white birches, where
the fresh growing grass on the bank
stirred shadows into the clear waters of
Poohtatook Brook with every zephyr, and
the brown thrush in the willow-top asked
the buttercup-dancing, air-prancing, soul-
entrancing bobolink to call me away from
my reverie.

The same quieting pipe that I have

i?4 En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde.

smoked in the midwinter icy blast in
Great South Bay, while the staunch sloop
plunged and strained at her anchor among
the rushing, voice-smothering, white-
capped waves, while the wind whistled
and hissed through the rigging, the boom
creaked and swung with every lurch, and
the heap of ducks exchanged places with
the bushel of oysters on the cabin floor.
While the thundering breakers on the
outer beach, furious in the easterly gale,
bellowed and groaned in hoarse monotone
between the reverberations from the tons
of black and whitening billows rolling in
mighty front high upon the sand bulwarks,
and dark night clouds, all ragged and torn,
drifted low and swiftly overhead.

Every whiff of smoke from the pipe is
richly flavored with the essence of old
associations, but I am precipitated back
into Denmark as one of the party, a
gigantic, red faced, good-natured hunter,
mounts a platform at one end of the
dining-room, and prepares to auction off
our game for the benefit of the poor peo-
ple of the village. This is a customary

En Klapjagt Paa Danske Fjelde. 175

proceeding after such a hunt as we have
had, and the bidding is spirited, some of
the hares bringing four or five times their
market price.

The auctioneer gets one krone (twenty-
seven cents) for one of his assistants
whom he holds up before the audience,
and a smaller man who is held out at half
arm's-length by the big one, is knocked
down to a bidder at ti oere (two and a
half cents).

ONE DEER.

DICK and I were camping at a beau-
tiful lake in the Adirondacks. It
was rather late in the season and the deer
that a few weeks previously had been in
the habit of coming to the edges of the
streams and lakes to nip the lily-buds and
wade about in the shallow water, were
seldom seen. Occasionally an old buck
would come out at evening and take a
stroll along the sandy margin of the lake,
adding for the moment a touch of wilder
beauty to the dark forest background, and
after standing proudly at some rocky
point and surveying the scene, would dis-
appear again into the woods.

A small bay half way up the lake
seemed to be a favorite place for the,
deer as innumerable tracks were always

to be seen in the sand along the shore,
176

One Deer. 177

and one afternoon when we were almost
out of venison in camp I suggested to
Dick that it would be the proper thing
for us to make a trip in the evening to
this place.

The wood for the camp-fire was cut and
piled at a convenient distance from the
smouldering back-log all ready for a glo-
rious blaze on our return, and just before
sundown I took my place in the bow of
our little boat with the Ballard rifle across
my knees, while Dick took the stern with
the paddle.

Long shadows were reaching out from
the big pines and hemlocks on the west
shore, the valleys were already in dark-
ness, and the long red rays of the fast
setting sun streaming through the tree-
tops illumined the rest of the forest with
a hazy evening light. Great tree trunks
lay partly sunken in the dark clear water,
their arms reaching grimly out, and quiet
reigned over all, the paddle in Dick's
skilled hand making not the slightest
sound.

As we silently glided along, a loon far

178 One Deer.

up the lake caught sight of us, and his
wild querulous call ringing through the
forest was answered by echo and sent
wavering from cliff to cliff. Again and
again the weird cry echoed and re-echoed
from the mountain sides and was sent
from shore to shore, and an eagle soaring
high overhead answered with its screams.
The reverberations ceased, and the still-
ness was broken only by the song of a
happy cross-bill within the short range
of his little voice. A mink came swim-
ming alongside of us, his bright mis-
chievous eyes trying to make out what we
were. Suddenly an otter's head appeared
above the water, and soon another, and
another, and in the most amusing way
they bobbed up and down and spit at us
in their spiteful way. For two or three
minutes the otters swam along ahead of
us, diving and appearing again, and finally
they disappeared all at once, probably
going to pursue their calling of catching
the big trout which abounded in the lake.
Gradually we neared the little bay, and
as we rounded the rocky point Dick

One Deer. 179

stopped paddling. The boat glided slowly
aldng with its own motion as we care-
fully scanned every fallen hemlock for a
sight of red hair, and in a moment I heard
a low whisper, " See that buck on the
right ! " at the same instant catching sight
of a pair of horns behind a stump that
stood quite a way out in the water, and
not more than ten rods from us. The old
fellow had evidently been watching us just
a little longer than we had been watching
him, and had taken good pains to keep
his eyes over the stump and very little
of the rest of his body in sight. I felt the
tremor of the boat again as Dick cautious-
ly plied the paddle, and we tried to move
to a position where I could see enough to
shoot at, but the buck knew what we were
about, and kept backing around until he
could go no further, when with five or six
long bounds, with flag raised, he made for
a windfall and stopped behind it for a
minute, snorting and stamping, before
taking his final leap into the underbrush.
He stood tail toward me, with his head
turned and looking over his shoulder,

180 One Deer.

supposing that he was well protected
by the branches, but there was where
he made a miscalculation, for at least a
square foot of red was in sight. Quickly
I levelled the rifle, and as the echoes rang
through the forest the buck made one
grand leap and stumbled as he struck the
ground, rolling clear over, with feet kick-
ing wildly in the air. In an instant he
was up again and had disappeared. A
few quick strokes with the paddle toward
shore, and Dick jumped out and started
in the direction that the deer had taken,
stopping long enough to motion to me
that he found blood.

For several minutes I waited in sus-
pense. It was fast growing darker, and
the minutes were getting twice as long as
in a stopped watch, when I heard Dick
call from a point along the shore above
me. The paddle was no longer needed,
so I pulled out the oars and, getting them
into the locks, rowed as rapidly as pos-
sible toward Dick. He had tracked the
buck to the water's edge, and was just
saying that we would find him mortally

One Deer. 181

wounded along the shore somewhere,
when, with a great snapping of branches
and splashing of water, the red fellow
sprang out of a windfall into the lake and
started to swim for a little island near by.
Dick jumped into the bow, and I pulled
the oars with a vengeance, not daring to
look around, but guided by the hoarse
breathing of the panting deer as he swam.
Rapidly we neared him, and just as Dick
called out " Right oar, quick!" the boat
gave a lurch, and I knew that he had our
game by the tail. At that moment the
handles of the oars came against my ab-
domen with a jerk and pressed so hard
that I could n't catch a breath for the life
of me. " Hold up, Dick!" I gasped.
" For H-e-a-v-e-n-'s s-a-k-e hold up ! "
The oars kept pressing so hard that I
could not get out another word, until
Dick, roaring with laughter, reached
around and threw one of the oars out of
its rowlock. In my excitement I had for-
gotten that Dick was not the motive
power at the bow, and that the fast
swimming buck was the cause of bring-

182 One Deer.

ing into practice a very simple problem in
levers.

We had only a few .yards more to go
before shallow water would be reached,
and picking up the rifle, I intended to stop
our locomotive, but the boat was un-
steady, and I fired the bullet directly into
the heart of the Adirondack wilderness.
Another bullet went on the same errand-
less mission. We were almost in the
shallow water, and shutting my teeth to-
gether with a firm resolve to hold steady,
I sent a bullet through the neck of the
deer, and with a convulsive start he sent
the spray flying in every direction, and
then lay kicking upon the water.

Towing the deer to the shore, we got
him into the boat, and as I took the bow
again, Dick took up the paddle and we
started for camp.

How fine the old buck looked in the
evening light, with his white belly up and
legs gracefully bent, as his head lay be-
tween my knees and I stroked his smooth
ears and opened the dark eyes and pat-
ted his neck.

One Deer. 183

As we neared camp the stars were
sending silvery gleams over the ripples in
our wake. A glimpse of the back-log
burning low showed us where to land, and
the smell of the smoke hanging heavily
over the water was a reminder of the
comforts in store.

The boat grated on the pebbly bottom,
and jumping out, we rolled out our game
and dragged him the short distance to
camp. Lichen-covered sticks were soon
snapping and roaring on the camp-fire,
and the forest around was all aglow as the
sparks arose with the smoke and floated
off among the branches of the trees over-
head. The red embers settled in a ruddy
heap, and the last piece of venison from
the deer which Dick had killed a few days
previously, and half a dozen big trout were
pulled from the moss by the spring where
we had stored them ready for use. As
they broiled and browned before the birch
logs the juice trickled out and fell sizzling
among the coals, sending fragrant aromas
in every direction. Our birch-bark plates
were filled as only the rich can afford

1 84

One Deer.

to fill them in the city. And then, in
a condition of supreme contentment I
leaned my back against a giant pine,
crossed my feet over the buck's glossy
flank and lit my pipe. Dick stretched
himself out at full length upon the moss
near by, and as the blue puffs floated
around our heads we told of former ex-
ploits with deer and bears until the pipes
and the camp-fire burned low.

A BIT OF GROUSE HUNTER'S
LORE.

THE game laws of New York allow
ruffed grouse shooting between the
first day of September and the first day
of January, and although the young birds
are powerful and quite knowing early in
the season, they are not much hunted un-
til the autumn leaves are falling and the
cool, invigorating air allows the hunter to
climb and tramp over windfalls and rocks
with comfort. During the months of
September and October the young grouse
have comparatively short tails and small
ruffs, so that they are readily distinguished
from the old birds, but by the latter end
of the season many of them are in perfect
feather except that they lack the sheen,
like that of polished mahogany, which can
be observed when the back of an old bird
185

1 86 A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore.

is held in the proper light. The very
large birds with iridescent black ruffs are
usually cocks, although it is frequently
difficult to find any marks of differentia-
tion in plumage which will distinguish
them from hens, and hunters are very
often mistaken as to the sex of any par-
ticular ruffed grouse. The best test with-
out dissection is perhaps that afforded by
spreading the tail to its full extent. If
the two external tail feathers can be
brought into a straight line with each
other before the other feathers of the tail
separate from each other at the margins,
the possessor of that tail is in all proba-
bility a male bird. The feathers of the
tail of the hen bird usually separate from
each other while the two external tail
feathers are making an obtuse angle. It
is customary for hunters to suppose that
the birds with brown or chocolate-colored
ruffs are females, but the color of the ruff
is not a distinctive sex mark.

The general coloration of ruffed grouse
varies greatly in different localities, the
"partridges" from northern New Eng-

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore. 187

land, for instance, being almost invariably
ashy gray in general effect, the color of
the tail being most pronounced. In Penn-
sylvania the "pheasants" give an impres-
sion of reddish brown coloring, and the
tails of these birds are beautifully rich in
their reddish elements. In New York
State we find red birds and gray birds in
about equal numbers, and in one brood
we find individuals representing both ex-
tremes in such color variation, just as is
the case among the screech owls. Ruffed
grouse from Oregon and from Texas are
smaller and much lighter than their East-
ern relatives. Late in the autumn the
grouse develop a row of narrow movable
projecting scales along the sides of the
toes for aids in walking upon slippery
snow and ice, and these scutellse, as they
are called, drop off when the snow melts
in the spring. The average weight of
full-grown Eastern grouse is about twenty-
three ounces, but this weight varies two
or three ounces in accordance with the
character and abundance of the food sup-
ply. The food in the autumn includes

1 88 A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore.

almost all berries that are accessible in
any given locality, but sumac and cedar
berries are not usually eaten until winter.
The grouse eat beechnuts, acorns, chest-
nuts, mushrooms, vetch pods and seeds,
witch-hazel flowers, and many succulent
leaves. They rarely touch wheat, maize,
oats, or barley, but of buckwheat they are
inordinately fond, and early in the season
they strip off the flowers and immature
grains, and continue to glean in the buck-
wheat fields until the stubble is deeply
covered with snow.

Hunters who are familiar with the birds'
habits beat the fences and deep-furrowed,
plowed ground all about the buckwheat
fields that are not too far removed from
the woods, and find there many birds that
the sportsman in the brush knows nothing
about. Grouse are fond of tearing the
fleshy fruit of the skunk cabbage to pieces
in order to get at the seeds and pulp.
They devour the fruit of all of the species
of wild grapes with avidity, and a covey
of grouse feeding among the tangled fes-
toons of grape-vines furnishes an inspirit-

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore. 189

ing spectacle for one who knows how to
approach them with due caution. The
leaves of the bishop's cap ( Tiarella cordi-
folia and T. nuda) are as staple an article
of diet with ruffed grouse as bread and
butter are for the American citizen, and
at all seasons of the year fragments of the
rough-lobed leaves may be found in their
crops ; even to the exclusion of all other
articles of diet at times. During the winter
the food consists principally of the buds of
birch, poplar, and maple trees, the leaves
and berries of the wintergreen, and the
leaves of the bishop's caps ; and as there
are very few days during the winter when
grouse cannot find an abundance of some
one of these forms of provender they are
almost always in good condition and "as
plump as partridges." Kalmia leaves, which
are sometimes eaten by them in winter, are
said on good authority to make the flesh
temporarily poisonous for man, and the
fact that the birds' food directly affects their
flesh is exemplified in the delicious aro-
matic flavor of grouse that have been feed-
ing extensively upon birch buds and win-

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore.

tergreens, the grateful odor pervading the
whole house when such birds are so
unfortunate as to get upon the hot
kitchen stove just before dinner time.

Ruffed grouse are as neat in their
habits as such proud and self-respecting
birds ought to be, and they are very fond
of dusting in the wallow holes which they
make in the dry dust of crumbling logs in
the woods. Wherever the grouse live
we are so certain to find their dusting
holes that the hunter wastes no time in
the woods in which the crumbling logs
have not been thus utilized by the elite.
During the day the birds spend most of
their time in the brushy edges of the
woods and in the brambly gullies that
extend out in the fields, and if there are
stumps near at hand in the open, the
grouse are fond of running out about them
and hiding there during the middle of the
day. We should naturally expect to find
the grouse on the sunniest hillsides when
the weather is very cold, but they seem to
be rather indifferent to the temperature of
their surroundings and the covey is almost

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore. 19 !

as likely to be found in the dreary north-
facing ravine as on the warm southern
exposures. When they are in company the
birds keep up a constant talking to each
other, but in low voices as though fearful
of being overheard. There are querulous
notes from the spinsters and solemn warn-
ings from the dignified matrons when the
obstreperous young cocks challenge each
other to a wrestle, but the loudest vocal
expression of the ruffed grouse is the
clucking and squealing of a bird that has
lain long to the dog, when, running like a
rabbit out from under the brush-heap, he
bustles on roaring wing away through the
swishing birch twigs and gives vent to his
emotions as he departs. Not all grouse
squeal when thus flushed, but they seldom
fail to utter their loudest notes when
alighting on a tree overhead after being
startled ; and when running for a hiding-
place they utter a hurried "quit, quit, quit"
that attracts the immediate attention of
the dog. A mother grouse, with young,
whines precisely like a dog when an enemy
is near her brood.

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore.

At night the grouse usually sleep upon
the ground, and indifferently in the woods
or out in the open clearing if the weather
is dry. When it is rainy they sleep under
logs, or rocks, or clumps of conifers, and
frequently a whole covey will be found at
night scattered along under an old tumble-
down fence in the woods. In winter when
the snow is deep they sleep either high up
in coniferous trees or under the snow in
the open, so that just at evening it is no
uncommon sight to see a covey of grouse
diving from wing, one after another, into
the snow. If the weather is very boister-
ous and the birds happen to dive down to
a patch of wintergreens or clover or young
winter wheat they may remain under the
snow for several days, burrowing for short
distances and eating the green leaves that
are thus found. When a grouse is sitting
quietly at no great depth beneath the snow,
a little hole about as large as one's finger
is kept open by the bird's breath, and the
moisture congealing in large flakes upon
the frosty twigs or grass just over the hole
will easily locate the bird for a good ob-

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore. 193

server ; and the grouse in such a position
will allow one to approach quite near
before he leaves his comfortable room
beneath the, winds.

The snow is sometimes too hard to serve
for house purposes, and then the birds
may not alight upon the ground for many
days at a time, but fly from the hiding tops
of evergreens to the trees in which they
bud at morning and at evening. On the
first warm day though, when the sun has
softened the snow, the boy who is follow-
ing a rabbit in the warm corner of the
thicket will suddenly come upon the neat-
est, the trimmest and the most inspiring
bird track that is ever imprinted in any
woods on the pure white surface of this
good earth of ours. Three evenly spread
toemarks in front and one short straight
mark behind. One footmark just as far
in advance of the previous one as that is
ahead of the one before it, and all in defi-
nite order. Here the track leads around
a rock ; there it goes along the whole
length of that half-sunken log and then
straight out through the sheep path among

194 A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore.

the hazels. No slipshod stepper ever made
such marks. So clear, so well defined, so
mathematical a track is indicative only of
such character as belongs to the noblest
of all game birds, and perhaps the boy will
hear from him in a moment. No ! there
is where he strutted ; and there are the
concentric segments of circles made by the
wing tips in the snow as the wise bird flew,
several minutes before danger approached.
His danger was not so great, though,
after all, if I am familiar with that boy,
for the bird that left was game for a man
of sharp wit and good judgment.

Grouse are quite apt to keep each other
company in small coveys until spring, ex-
cept when they are much disturbed, but
certain very old birds are quite content to
be solitary, and they are then difficult to
approach under ordinary circumstances.
A wary old bird will slide quietly out of
the way as soon as he hears the sportsman
approaching, and it is folly to attempt to
corner him, but most of the grouse run
and hide when there are signs of danger,
and a good pointer or setter will follow

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore. 195

them easily to their places of concealment.
A grouse will not often remain before the
pointing dog for more than two or three
minutes, and then he bursts forth with the
startling roar that reminds one of the sud-
den dumping of a coal cart upon the pave-
ment, unnerving the hunter who is not
cool and steady in his aim. If the bird
makes a high flight at first he may be ex-
pected to alight upon the ground on de-
scending. If he goes off low he will
probably slant upward at the end of his
flight of a few hundred yards and alight
in a tree, barring accidents which are lia-
ble to happen at the hands of the gunners.
Grouse are sometimes caught in snares
that are set for them on their feeding-
grounds, and hunters who cannot kill a
flying bird are not beneath chasing them
with spaniels which bark at the flushed
birds and cause them to stop, out of curi-
osity, and alight on limbs overhead in
order to watch the antics of the dogs.
The hunter can then approach closely
before attracting the attention of the

preoccupied grouse. It is a very difficult
13

196 A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore-

matter to see a grouse that has alighted
in a large tree at the end of a deliberate
flight, as he usually sits bolt upright very
close to the trunk and moves not a feather,
and unless one scans every foot of the
tree systematically the bird will probably
not be discovered. Hunters often declare
that they have never been able to find a
grouse in a tree, just as we hear young
women complain that they cannot discover
a four-leafed clover, and yet certain eyes
are very expert at detecting grouse in
trees and four-leafed clovers in the green-
sward ; much to the discomfiture of un-
trained observers who were not previously
aware of their lack of the requisite power.
Wing-shooting is the most certain and
the most satisfactory way of getting a
good bag of grouse, and for this purpose
well broken pointers or setters are indis-
pensable. Their keen noses enable them
to detect the scent of a bird that has
walked along the ground perhaps half an
hour previously, and they follow the trail
until the vicinity of the game is reached.
The bird being located in his hiding-place,

A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore. 19?

the dog stands silently pointing until the
hunter has found a good place from which
to shoot when the grouse springs out on
wing. The most successful shots in the
brush are not often the men who make
good scores in open field shooting, for in
the latter sort of work one learns to take
sight along the barrel of his gun, and in
the woods such sighting is naturally in-
terfered with. The best grouse hunters
of my acquaintance shoot with both eyes
open and head erect, moving the gun with
the same intuition that guides the bat-
ter in striking a ball after "suppressing
the image" of everything except that of
the object aimed at. The image of
branches and trees upon the retina of the
eye being suppressed at will by the hunter,
he is then conscious only of the presence
of the swiftly moving bird, and this ob-
ject he follows as accurately with the
gun as he would with his finger if he were
pointing out the bird to a friend.

Very nice calculations are required in
order to hit the bird, however, for if the
gun were aimed directly at a crossing

198 A Bit of Grouse Hunter's Lore.

grouse at the instant of firing, the charge
of shot would pass far to the rear of the
game. It is necessary to know approxi-
mately the length of time required for
combustion of the powder, the time occu-
pied by the charge of shot in reaching any
given point, and to judge correctly of the
distance and direction of the angles and
curves of flight of the bird. All of the
factors excepting the first vary with each
fraction of a second after the bird is on
wing, so it would seem almost impossible
that any one could be capable of making
the calculations requisite for striking a
swift-speeding grouse among the trees
were it not for the aid of that peculiar
faculty of instinctive co-ordination in
action of brain and muscle. A strong
bird is not easily killed even when fairly hit,
and it seemed cruel to allow a wounded
grouse to escape, but men who have been
struck with shot testify that the benumb-
ing effect was such that they did not
suffer any real pain after the receipt of the
injury. When we know what a fox or
hawk would do with a captured grouse it
makes the hunter's conscience easy.

TROUT IN A THUNDER-STORM.

ONE day in the summer of 1880,
Charley and I, with our guide,
Dick Crego, left our camp on Fourth
Lake, for a day's trout-fishing in the
south branch of Moose River. It was
one of those days in July when the
dweller in the city would ponder over the
question in his philosophical mind as
to whether life was worth living or not
and decide in the negative, but in the
woods the fragrant breaths from hem-
locks and cool air waves from the moss-
covered and ferny ground gave one an
exhilaration and exuberant delight in mere
existence.

The day was not a perfect one for
trout-fishing, but for us lovers of na-
ture the summer stillness of the deep
forest possessed such an enchantment
199

200 Trout in a Thunder-Storm.

that the prospect of a light creel at
evening had no effect on our spirits.
Trout were abundant anyway, and we
were catching enough every day for camp
use.

As Dick quietly paddled us near the
spring holes we could see the trout lazily
poising themselves on their red and white
marginal fins, and slightly stirring the
sandy bottom with slow sweeps of their
mottled tails, not caring to exert them-
selves to make a move for the flies which
we seductively cast near them.

Once in a while under the low hanging
branches of a hemlock or bunch of alders
we would find a trout that was anxious to
have a pull at the fly, but on the whole we
had taken very few up to the middle of
the afternoon, when ominous mutterings
began to be heard in the south. Great
thunder-heads of dark cumulus appeared
over the tall pines and hemlocks and
rapidly rolled toward us. The forest was
wrapped in an awful stillness. Not a
sound could be heard near us save an
occasional muffled murmur of the water as

Trout in a Thunder-Storm. 201

it whirled in an eddy under some fallen
tree trunk.

We had arrived at the " big spring hole "
and as Dick cautiously sent the light boat
close to the bank Charley and I stepped
out, and bending low behind the bushes
crept to an open place where we could
cast our flies easily. Charley made the
first cast. His flies had hardly made a
ripple on the water when splash ! down
went his red ibis. His light rod bent into
a half circle, and as I cast a quick glance
at the spot I saw half a dozen trout glid-
ing about near his hooked one with the
restless eager movements which always
mean hunger. My flies alighted instantly
in the same place, and down went my
stretcher fly with a whirl. As that trout
made a quick turn I saw another calmly
fasten himself on one of the dropper
flies. We led our trout to one side of
the pool and Dick slipped a landing net
under them and threw them, tumbling and
squirming, upon the grass. In a moment
we had both made another cast and
hooked our fish, and the rest of the trout

202 Trout in a Thunder-Storm.

in the eddy were excited and angry be-
cause they had not snatched the flies first.

Meanwhile the forest had grown darker
and darker. The great banks of inky
black clouds were low over our heads.
Quivering flashes of lightning lighted up
the mountains, and the heavy thunder
shook the very ground and reverberated
and echoed.

Cast after cast we made, and the trout
seemed invigorated by the rigor of the
elements. Big lusty fellows made the
spray fly as they plunged after our flies
with might and main. Some in their
eagerness dashed clear over the flies and
turned double somersaults in the air. At
almost every cast a trout was hooked, and
a sight of our bent rods and whirring reels
would have made the Sphinx arise and
whoop for joy just for once.

A gale rushed through the tops of the
pines, and as they bent before the blast
and the wind soughed through their
branches the big drops began to fall.
Still we fished until Dick fairly dragged
us to the boat, which he had pulled up on

Trout in a Thunder-Storm. 203

the bank and turned over. Under the
boat we crawled, and the trout flapped
about in the wet grass near us, while
lightning flashed and thunder roared.
Who says that trout will not bite in a
thunder-storm ?

COOT SHOOTING IN NEW
ENGLAND.

NEW YORK, Oct. 12.

IN a recent number of Forest and Stream
"M. H. Able" asks if the "coots"
which the Eastern gunners works so hard
to get are the same as the mud-hens of
the Western States. One day's shooting
in line would convince our friend that he
was not shooting mud-hens, but that big,
sturdy sea-ducks, worthy of his lead, were
carrying off ounces of his Number 4
shot. The ducks which are called coots
along the coast consist of three or four
species. The male surf-ducks are called
skunkhead coots, and their wives and
yearlings gray coots. The velvet scoter is
known as the white-winged coot, and the
American scoter is the butter-billed coot.
The eiders, also, are dragged into the
204

Coot Shooting in New England. 205

"genus coot." In no sort of shooting do
hunters ever get aroused to so high a
pitch of excitement as while gunning
for these heavy sea-ducks. The birds are
abundant and are constantly on the move
from one feeding-ground to another. The
fresh ocean breezes key the hunters up to
the last degree of manly vigor, and as the
light boats ride the long swells as grace-
fully as a swallow floats through the air,
the boom and roar of the surf among the
rocks on the shore inspires the gunners
with its freedom. The boats are swing-
ing on their long anchor-lines twenty rods
apart ; the ducks are flying swiftly through
between the boats, and every moment the
heavy ten-bores are ringing out loud and
clear, and the puffs of thick smoke are
borne rapidly away on the breeze. Here
a white-wing, the leader of the flock, struck
with the Number 45, halts and falters and
plunges headlong into the waves ; there a
skunkhead, proud in his speed, wilts sud-
denly high in the air — down, down, down
he comes, and the spray flies in every
direction as he surges heavily into the

206 Coot Shooting in New England.

water, while a few feathers float back on
the breeze. Men are shouting, ten-bores
booming ; wings are whistling, feathers
flying ; coots are splashing, bounding,
diving — while the rush and the roar of
the breakers in the rocks keep time to
the riding of the boats.

RUFFED GROUSE AMONG THE
GRAPE-VINES.

SAM and I had been hunting ruffed
grouse every day for a week, and
Sunday had finally brought us to a halt to
rest for the week ahead. It was a glori-
ous Sabbath in a little quaint village in
Wayne County, Pa. We sat on the stone
slab at the kitchen door of the old farm-
house, and smoked our pipes in content-
ment, watching the yellow leaves as they
lazily zig-zagged down to the ground from
the limbs of the half bare maples, and the
antiopa butterflies slowy flitting from one
decayed apple to another under the trees
in the orchard close by. A blue dove
on the eaves of the barn cooed occasion-
ally in a quiet, Sunday way as he basked
in the November sunshine, and the hens
were dozing in the holes where they had
207

Ruffed Grouse,

been dusting themselves an hour before,
in front of the barn door. Belle and Carrie
were curled up in the grass near us,
dreaming of grouse that never flushed
wild ; and everything was still. The
sound of the church-bell down in the vil-
lage seemed mellowed as though in har-
mony with the color of the beech and
maple woods through which its vibrations
reached us.

" Sam ! " said I, " those grouse down
by the rock cut will be in the frost grapes
this morning, and I 'm going down across
the lot to see if I can get near them.
Don't let the dogs follow me."

The dry leaves, a foot deep, along the
fence by the grape-vines seemed to rustle
louder than they ever did before, as I
cautiously climbed over the rails, but no
grouse was near to be frightened, and
although expecting the sudden dash and
whirr every moment, I got near to the
farther side of the little patch of vines
without starting a bird, and sitting down
in the leaves with my back against a
mossy boulder, tried to fit it well, and

Ruffed Grouse. 209

waited. In a few minutes there was a
pattering of very light footsteps in the
leaves back of me. Nearer and nearer
they came, stopping for a second and then
proceeding again, coming my way all of
the while. Suddenly a surprised " peet "
on the right caused me to slowly turn my
eyes in that direction, and there, within
six feet, was a splendid male grouse, with
crest erect and tail partially spread, look-
ing curiously at me. I kept stiller than any
little mouse, and the grouse satisfied him-
self that I was harmless. He came a few
steps nearer, clucking all of the while, and
mounting a stone, spread ' his tail to its
fullest extent, and with crest and tail erect,
with ruff displayed, and with wings droop-
ing to his feet, he turned two or three
times around, like a turkey gobbler.
Then composing himself again he took
another good look and walked around in
front.

At that moment another grouse, a
younger one, had come around the rock
by which I was sitting, and he too went
through the same performance, but not in

210 Ruffed Grouse.

such fine style. Both birds then walked
on a way, watching me all of the while,
and soon four more grouse came in sight.
They walked within three rods, but paid
me no attention, and busied themselves
picking up fallen frost grapes. Suddenly
there was a rush overhead and a grouse
alighted in the vines just above me and
commenced picking at a bunch of grapes,
his smooth plumage with the dark mark-
ings on the sides seeming more beautiful
than anything I had ever seen. Once in
a while he looked down at me over his
shoulder, erected his crest, and gave an
interested " peet, peet," and then went on
picking grapes again.

In a short time eleven grouse were in
sight, moving about as gracefully as could
be, putting their little feet lightly down
on the dead leaves, and all engaged in
hunting for food. One of them flew up
to the one already in the vines, and then
nearly all followed, and commenced pick-
ing the grapes that hung in scattered
clusters.

All of this while I had remained perfectly

Ruffed Grouse. 211

quiet, but my position was fast becoming
uncomfortable. An edge of rock was boring
into the middle of my back ; another sharp
piece had done its level best to penetrate
the back of my head, and a jagged stump
had worked just as far into my leg as it
could possibly get, so that I had to move.
The grouse all seemed alarmed at the
sight. They sat straight and motionless
among the vines, but none flew. For
several minutes they remained in this
position, and knowing that I was discov-
ered I arose, expecting to see all of them
dart off at once. This they did not do,
however, but started slowly one at a time,
and sailed off only a few rods into the
woods.

WING SHOOTING VERSUS
GROUND SHOOTING.

NEW YORK, Jan. 2ist.

Editor Forest and Stream :

This controversy as to whether it is
proper to shoot a sitting grouse or not
will probably never be brought to an end.
I am acquainted with a great many men
who would scorn to shoot a quail or
woodcock, if the bird was not upon the
wing ; but who would not hesitate to
shoot a grouse upon the ground. On the
the other hand, I know sportsmen to
whom a grouse so killed would be an
albatross about the neck.

A certain number of men will never
consent to lose caste by shooting any
game bird that is not flying, while others
will allow their color-line to shade off into
the dusky by making an exception of the
ruffed grouse.

Wing vs. Ground Shooting. 213

Then there are the boys to be consid-
ered. How well do I remember the joy-
ous days of childhood when most of my
hours were spent in the woods, and when
the birds, and animals, and fishes, and
plants seemed to be the only things in the
whole world worthy of any consideration.

I knew just where to find the old par-
tridge's nest in early May on the warm
sunny hillside among the sprouts and
junipers. How often I have watched the
mother bird on her nest ; and when she
skurried away I would stretch myself at
full length by her treasures, and with my
head between my little hands would gaze
eagerly at the eight or ten bufT-colored eggs
and ponder over their contents, and think
of what they would bring forth. When my
visits to the nest were frequent, I used to
imagine that the old bird grew tamer, and
that she knew better than to be afraid.

After the little downy chicks were
hatched I could always find the brood. If
they were not down by the spring brook,
where the fox-grapes and hellebores grew,
they were up along the old fence among

214 Wing vs. Ground Shooting.

the cedars and cat-briers, or they were in
the pastures among the huckleberry bushes.
At any rate, they had favorite resorts, and
I always knew where those resorts were.

When the autumn days drew near and
the birds had grown, I used to lug out the
old gun, and, while hunting lesser game,
my heart would beat fast as I penetrated
the haunts of the partridges. The old gun
was long and heavy, and it balanced like
an armful of oars ; and I was too little and
too anxious to be steady.

When after much patient watching I
happened to see one of my patridges upon
the ground before he flew, I nervously set
the ponderous hammer back, and poking
the long barrel through the tangling
branches, and trembling more than I
ever have since in the presence of much
larger game, I would pull hurriedly on
the trigger.

Why would n't that trigger hurry up ?
I could feel it pull, and pull, and pull, and
then my small finger would take a fresh
grip and draw with a vengeance, and
through the smoke from the explosion I

Wing vs. Ground Shooting. 215

could see the bird go whirring away with
no part of him blasted.

Later in the season I used to set twitch-
ups for the rabbits, and steel-traps for
muskrats, and snares for the partridges.
How anxiously and how often I would visit
those snares, and every time that I ap-
proached them, with bated breath I peered
through the bushes to see if there was
"one in." When from a distance, part of
the snare fence could be seen all knocked
out of shape and the dried leaves scat-
tered about in confusion, I would eagerly
jump to the dead partridge that lay in
their midst, and pulling from his neck the
coil he could not shuffle off, I would take
the bird in my lap and stroke his feathers
one by one, spread his feet out in my
hand, and rub his soft breast against my
cheek. It seemed to be too good to be
true ; life was overflowing with happiness.
The robins and red squirrels and other
standard boys' game would fade into in-
significance for the time being, and the
partridge brought a pleasure keener than
some mortals seem to experience.

216 Wing vs. Ground Shooting.

But years have rolled by, and the snare
and the old single-barrel are things of the
past. I have owned many a fine gun and
hunted many a fine setter or pointer in far
distant States and countries, and the days
spent in the woods with dog and gun are
enjoyed even now with a boyish enthu-
siasm. It is many years since I have shot
at a sitting game-bird, and it will be a
great many more before I do it again.
There is a grand feeling of pride in being
able to kill the " hurtling grouse " as he
dashes forth from the brush in front of
the well-trained setter ; and a pleasure
that would be marred by the presence of
a murdered bird in the game-pocket.

Some of your correspondents are skep-
tical about the existence of sportsmen who
delight in having a ruffed grouse do his
very worst when he bursts away through
the thicket, but your humble servant is
one of the number who does enjoy such
shooting the best. A few of my friends
will tell you that I am a good shot, but the
aforesaid friends are kindly persons who
only look at the bag of birds after a day's

Wing vs. Ground Shooting. 217

shooting, and do not count the empty
shells. There is an interesting story in
many of these empty shells, and I would
prefer that it remain untold.

In your last issue " Octo " says that in
fifty-four flying shots at grouse he has killed
sixteen birds. I have counted shells often
enough to know what that means. There
have been days when eight or ten empty
shells represented as many ruffed grouse
in my bag ; and there have been other
days when the same number of shells
would indicate only a bird still in the fu-
ture. I can show you men, though, who
can and do average one bird to every two
shots, but they are market shooters, who
pick out only the fairest chances, and
thereby save an amunition bill. " Octo "
probably shoots at all of the birds that
rise within range, and so do I, and ten to
one we have the most fun. " Octo," I 'm
sorry that you killed those two sitting
birds. If you can keep up your average
on wing shots, come over to our side of
the fence, and your virtue will be its own
reward.

MY WHITE VIOLET.

T ITTLE white violet you are my love,

Nestling so modestly down in the moss.
Shyly you hide from the bold sun above,
Humble the home that the oak shadows cross,
Yet 't is the one of your choice, dainty love.

Pretty white violet you are my own,

Here on the leaves I will lie by your side.

Happy am I at not being alone,

Never a feeling or mood need I hide

When I am with you, my pure one, my own.

Honest white violet you'll not deceive,
Nor do I ask you to give love for mine.

Comfort enough 't is for me to believe,
Pleasure to feel that you cannot design,

Then when I love you, you will not deceive.

218

AN EASTER CROCUS.

I WATCHED a budding crocus
As it rose to meet the light,
From a slumber 'neath the snowbanks
Through the dreary winter night,
And it seemed too bright and lovely
For a thing with roots in dirt.

Came a whisper from Ostara :

Stored-up forces from the sun
Sprang from out that bulb all potent —

And its mission was begun.
For it pleased men with true beauty,
Though the roots were deep in dirt.

Then I thought of Easter morning,

When a man divine arose,
Calling forth a power eternal

For believers ; to disclose
All the sin and human folly
That we slumber in, as dirt.

And to-day from all that 's worldly

May fine character arise
Out of envies, lies, injustice.

There 's to us a glad surprise
That such thing can spring from forces
Hidden in the midst of dirt.
219

THE EMPTY KENNEL.

ON the kennel floor the chain lies
Where it lay a year ago
Rusty, knotted, wound in cobweb,
Where cold spiders hide below.
Creaking on its unused hinges

Swings the loose door to and fro,
And the kennel straw is mildewed
Dampened by the sifting snow.

Now there is no dog to care for,

Silence only when I call,
But I must call : Grouse ! My beauty !

Hark ! A moan behind the wall.
Listen ! was that not his voice then ?

Moans the wind there — that is all.
Sighs the wind about the kennel

While the rustling dead leaves fall.

When the autumn leaves were falling,

Just one year ago to-day,
Grouse, the noblest of the setters,

Listened in the morning's gray

220

The Empty Kennel. 221

Till he heard my footsteps coming.

Leaping sprang at me in play.
Shook his sides and barked so gladly,

Said to me all he could say.

And he told me that he loved me,

Said he wanted to obey,
Said he knew just where a partridge

Hidden 'neath the windfall lay.
There he pointed, staunch as granite,

While the bold bird dared to stay :
Brought the shot bird back so proudly,

Asked if that was not the way.

Then I praised the dear old setter,

Looked down at his earnest eyes,
'Til we felt like two good fellows,

Bound by all the hunter's ties.
And I said to him : now Grousie,

Many a year before us lies,
Many a day we '11 hunt together

Ere the soul of either flies.

So we ranged along together,

Over meadow, ridge and swale ;
In the swamp the twittering woodcock

In the brush the calling quail,
Found their hiding spots discovered,

Found their tricks of no avail.
All in vain the running partridge

Tried to throw us off his trail.

222 The Empty Kennel.

When at noon we stopped a moment,

At the spring beneath the pine,
If he put his nose in first there,

His was just as good as mine.
For we shared nice things together,

On the moss we 'd drink and dine.
Side by side our single shadow

Made a pretty friendship sign.

Late that day the slanting sunbeams

Reddened all the rocky hill,
With a strange unnatural lighting,

Colors boding something ill.
Through the forest sped a rabbit,

Tempting me to try my skill,
'T was no rabbit, but a spirit,

Some foul thing I could not kill.

Soon its evil work was ended.

Grouse came slowly back to me,
Looked up at me, asked a question,

Laid his head against my knee.
On his neck there was a blood stain,

But no mortal eye could see
What the wound was — how it came there,

Boy ! asked I, what can this be ?

What is this my bonnie setter ?

Why do you my presence seek ?
'T is not true that I have harmed you,

Oh ! if you could only speak.

The Empty Kennel. 223

Tell me if you think I meant it,

Tell me not in manner meek,
Hurt me not with your forgiveness,

But on me quick vengeance wreak.

Said he : " Master if you did it,

Then I know it must be right,
I have been a true companion,

Worked and loved with all my might.
If from you I should receive this,

Then my dying pains are light ;
If my day has brought you pleasure,

Gladly pass I into night."

Tenderly I laid him out then

On a golden wood-brake sheaf,
Made for him a brilliant covering

Of the sumac's scarlet leaf.
Sadly left him with the Dryads,

Asked of them to share my grief :
Faithful friend of man — the setter,

Dead — with friend of nymph — the leaf.

On the kennel floor the chain lies

Where it lay a year ago ;
Rusty, knotted, wound in cobweb,

Where cold spiders hide below.
Creaking on its unused hinges,

Swings the loose door to and fro,
And the kennel straw is mildewed

Dampened by the sifting snow.

THE OLD-SQUAW.

ALL the coast in white is covered
Dark-limbed pines snow burdens bear
Sea rocks growing thick with fucus
Hide beneath an icy glare !

Out beyond, the waves are surging,

Darkly, slowly, changing form
While the sea-breeze lulled and quiet

Waits the coming of the storm.

See the snow-flakes light descending,

Floating down from leaden sky.
Listen ! o'er the waves a sound comes,

Ah-ar-luk, the old-squaw's cry.

Low and mellow comes an answer

From the flock out in the bay,
And the swift bird hears the greeting,

Turns and throws aloft the spray.

Warm his feathers, cheery-hearted,

What cares he for wintry cold ?
Gay companion always welcomed,

Feelings all in singing told.
224

The Old-Squaw.

Ah-ar-luk, as snow is falling,
Clearly rings o'er all the bay ;

And the voices, floating shoreward
Chant their love for such a day.

225

WHAT I FOUND IN THE HUNT-
ING-COAT POCKET.

IN my house there 's a half-hidden closet
Just under the stairs to the loft,
And cobwebs are safe in its corners,
For none of the hands that are soft
Ever dare touch the latch that will open

To cartridge belts, shotguns, and dangers.
But old Don and I have a feeling

Of pity for all the poor strangers
To things that are hung on those walls.

There 's a pair of big boots in one corner,

And snipe decoys, rods and a float ;
But dearest of all the odd things there,

To me, is the soiled canvas coat.
And to-day in the hunting-coat pocket

I find a dry, shrivelled-up leaf,
A feather that once was a woodcock's,

And one little twig, come to grief.
There 's some rabbit hair too, and loose grass-seed.

How quickly for alders of autumn

My thoughts leave this hot summer day,

For frost-covered corn-shocks and stubble,
And windrows of brown leaves — and gay,
226

The Hunting-Coat Pocket 227

That rustle to partridge and hunter.

The black duck springs quacking from sedges
That shelter the muskrat and mink,

And visions of rough, craggy ledges
Are all in plain view in my closet.

The freedom that makes a man noble

And draws him from sordid desires
Has come to me here for a moment,

And stays while a wood-sprite inquires
If the seeker for fame and a fortune

Who wrecks both his body and mind,
Ever gains at the end of the struggle

A treasure as rich as I find
In the twig, and the leaf, and the feather.

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