There is more idealization in fish than in any other subject. The theme doesn't compare with snakes in deep moral significance; but in the matter of the pure ideal fish beat all nature. I come to this subject with a painful sense of my own incapacity. I know not how I shall satisfy the multitude unless another miracle shall make a few small fishes go a long way.

Letting ourselves down to the creek, down steep cliffs, some two hundred feet, through laurels and ivies and clinging vines and over rough rocks, we whipped the stream for two or three hundred yards without a single "jump" of a trout. Reaching shady water, the sport began. I secured the first speckled beauty; Brutus followed; and Panier came last, and then beat us all fishing. Rocky Fork is a noted trout stream, and as rough as any I ever saw, not excepting the Hell Hollow Fork of Clark's Creek. Coming down at an angle of thirty degrees, it winds amongst great masses of granite and piles of drift logs, under a dense shade of giant hemlocks, or spruce pines, as they are

called locally, in a deep, narrow gorge, whose steep walls rise high on both sides, their crests unseen in the dense vegetation. Its banks are lined with an almost impenetrable growth of gnarled, knotted, and interlaced laurel and ivy. It is labor, but labor that physics pain, to clamber over huge rocks, moss-grown, wet and slippery, to leap from round stone to sharp ledge, to poise oneself upon the crown of a smooth "biscuit " rock, looking for the next footing, to whip pools and rapids with the dancing fly, intensely eager and ever expectant for the leap of a trout.

These delights may be varied as some uncrossable pool, some unwadable reach, or some unscalable ledge blocks the way, chock-a-block, and drives the sportsman to drag himself and his rod through the tangled laurel, As Mr. Lincoln said: "This is about the kind of thing to be liked by people who like this kind of thing." I've always succeeded in believing that I like it; and Brutus and Panier were continually exclaiming: "O how we're enjoying ourselves!"

The brook trout is a slender, scaleless fish,

with huge mouth, dark back, and light sides, beautifully speckled with red and gold. In the ideal it weighs from two to four pounds. A dull realistic view reduces it in practical fishing to a quarter of a pound Troy. Whether it take the bait at the surface, or leap out of the water, or seize the bait in the water, it always darts at its prey. The sportsman uses an artificial fly, a grasshopper, a butterfly, dough, or a red worm, and an excellent bait at times is an insect, found at the bottom of streams, where it envelops itself in an armor of gravels, woven together by some. viscous fluid, as an assurance that it is good for something to prey upon. Bait good at one hour is not attractive at another; and sometimes it is best to fish deep, at others merely to whip the surface. Generally the best time for trout fishing is before sunup and after sundown.

At six bells A. T. Ramp was called to read the promised sonnet, and read as follows:

TO MRS. MARY

Ah! leave thy grief! Be merry, mine, to-night. Love courses through my veins like fire-hued wine;

My heart's ablaze with ecstacy divine;
My fervid soul's aglow with rosy light.

The swallows southward take their mournful way;
But why should we go sad with wintry brow?
Let's snatch from care and chain the golden now,
And pluck life's budding blossoms while we may.
I know that envious Death rides on the blast;
And cold Decay lurks in the winter near-
Already Nature mourneth flower and leaf;
But Nature's quick'ning love can summer past
Call back, and clothe therewith the dying year;
And so my love shall burgeon on thy grief.

An active sportsman, beginning early and whipping two or three miles of good stream, should catch one or two hundred trout. Beginning at 10 o'clock, when it is hard to lure the trout from his lurking place, our joint catch was not above seventy-five, although we fished about four miles of rough After exhausting our allotted time, we enjoyed a plunge in a fine pool, topping off with a douche in a cascade, pouring down a smooth rock trough and polishing up with a libation to snakes by way of taking off the chill.

water.

It is one of the commonest errors of human

judgment to flout the dangers of the road we 1 have gone over. This mistake led Panier into an acrobatic exhibition over a pile of driftwood and down a ledge of smooth rocks, that would have done credit to a ground and lofty tumbler. Brutus was not content with Enbodily injuries of a sui-bruisal nature. trusted with the supply of snake medicine, he proved as untrustworthy as Judas with the bag. Poising himself upon the slippery edge of a huge rock for a leap into futurity, his foot slipped. O for inspiration for a poem upon the leaps that were never leapt! Brutus went sliding down the slippery face of the rock, holding fast, like grim death, to the sad neck of an unfortunate quart bottle. Coming up with a round turn at the bottom, careless of abrasions, he triumphantly held up the neck of the bottle, while the snake medicine went weeping down the obdurate side of that unsympathetic, uncheered rock, like oil down Aaron's wasteful beard. When consciousness of his crime overcame him, Brutus sank back with a lost look into the realm of things that were, and wept bitterly.