CHAPTER XI.

When Mr. Hobbs’s young friend left him to go to Dorincourt Castle and become Lord Fauntleroy, and the grocery-man had time to realize that the Atlantic Ocean lay between himself and the small companion who had spent so many agreeable hours in his society, he really began to feel very lonely indeed. The fact was, Mr. Hobbs was not a clever man nor even a bright one; he was, indeed, rather a slow and heavy person, and he had never made many acquaintances. He was not mentally energetic enough to know how to amuse himself, and in truth he never did anything of an entertaining nature but read the newspapers and add up his accounts. It was not very easy for him to add up his accounts, and sometimes it took him a long time to bring them out right; and in the old days, little Lord Fauntleroy, who had learned how to add up quite nicely with his fingers and a slate and pencil, had sometimes even gone to the length of trying to help him; and, then too, he had been so good a listener and had taken such an interest in what the newspaper said, and he and Mr. Hobbs had held such long conversations about the Revolution and the British and the elections and the Republican party, that it was no wonder his going left a blank in the grocery store. At first it seemed to Mr. Hobbs that Cedric was not really far away, and would come back again; that some day he would look up from his paper and see the lad standing in the doorway, in his white suit and red stockings, and with his straw hat on the back of his head, and would hear him say in his cheerful little voice: “Hello, Mr. Hobbs! This is a hot day—isn’t it?” But as the days passed on and this did not happen, Mr. Hobbs felt very dull and uneasy. He did not even enjoy his newspaper as much as he used to. He would put the paper down on his knee after reading it, and sit and stare at the high stool for a long time. There were some marks on the long legs which made him feel quite dejected and melancholy. They were marks made by the heels of the next Earl of Dorincourt, when he kicked and talked at the same time. It seems that even youthful earls kick the legs of things they sit on;—noble blood and lofty lineage do not prevent it. After looking at those marks, Mr. Hobbs would take out his gold watch and open it and stare at the inscription: “From his oldest friend, Lord Fauntleroy, to Mr. Hobbs. When this you see, remember me.” And after staring at it awhile, he would shut it up with a loud snap, and sigh and get up and go and stand in the doorway—between the box of potatoes and the barrel of apples—and look up the street. At night, when the store was closed, he would light his pipe and walk slowly along the pavement until he reached the house where Cedric had lived, on which there was a sign that read, “This House to Let”; and he would stop near it and look up and shake his head, and puff at his pipe very hard, and after a while walk mournfully back again.

This went on for two or three weeks before any new idea came to him. Being slow and ponderous, it always took him a long time to reach a new idea. As a rule he did not like new ideas, but preferred old ones. After two or three weeks, however, during which, instead of getting better, matters really grew worse, a novel plan slowly and deliberately dawned upon him. He would go to see Dick. He smoked a great many pipes before he arrived at the conclusion, but finally he did arrive at it. He would go to see Dick. He knew all about Dick. Cedric had told him, and his idea was that perhaps Dick might be some comfort to him in the way of talking things over.

So one day when Dick was very hard at work blacking a customer’s boots, a short, stout man with a heavy face and a bald head, stopped on the pavement and stared for two or three minutes at the bootblack’s sign, which read:

“PROFESSOR DICK TIPTON CAN’T BE BEAT.”

He stared at it so long that Dick began to take a lively interest in him, and when he had put the finishing touch to his customer’s boots, he said:

“Want a shine, sir?”

The stout man came forward deliberately and put his foot on the rest.

“Yes,” he said.

Then when Dick fell to work, the stout man looked from Dick to the sign and from the sign to Dick.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“From a friend o’ mine,” said Dick,—“a little feller. He guv’ me the whole outfit. He was the best little feller ye ever saw. He’s in England now. Gone to be one o’ those lords.”

“Lord—Lord—”asked Mr. Hobbs, with ponderous slowness, “Lord Fauntleroy—Goin’ to be Earl of Dorincourt?”

Dick almost dropped his brush.

“Why, boss!”he exclaimed, “d’ye know him yerself?”

“I’ve known him.” answered Mr. Hobbs, wiping his warm forehead, “ever since he was born. We were lifetime acquaintances—that’s what _we_ were.”

It really made him feel quite agitated to speak of it. He pulled the splendid gold watch out of his pocket and opened it, and showed the inside of the case to Dick.

“‘When this you see, remember me,’” he read.

“That was his parting keepsake to me. ‘I don’t want you to forget me’—those were his words—I’d ha’ remembered him,” he went on, shaking his head, “if he hadn’t given me a thing, an’ I hadn’t seen hide nor hair on him again. He was a companion as _any_ man would remember.”

“He was the nicest little feller I ever see,” said Dick. “An’ as to sand—I never ha’ seen so much sand to a little feller. I thought a heap o’ him, I did,—an’ we was friends, too—we was sort o’ chums from the fust, that little young un an’ me. I grabbed his ball from under a stage fur him, an’ he never forgot it; an’ he’d come down here, he would, with his mother or his nuss an’ he’d holler: ‘Hello, Dick!’ at me, as friendly as if he was six feet high, when he warn’t knee high to a grasshopper, and was dressed in gal’s clo’es. He was a gay little chap, and when you was down on your luck, it did you good to talk to him.”

“That’s so,” said Mr. Hobbs. “It was a pity to make an earl out of _him_. He would have _shone_ in the grocery business—or dry goods either; he would have _shone_!” And he shook his head with deeper regret than ever.

It proved that they had so much to say to each other that it was not possible to say it all at one time, and so it was agreed that the next night Dick should make a visit to the store and keep Mr. Hobbs company. The plan pleased Dick well enough. He had been a street waif nearly all his life, but he had never been a bad boy, and he had always had a private yearning for a more respectable kind of existence. Since he had been in business for himself, he had made enough money to enable him to sleep under a roof instead of out in the streets, and he had begun to hope he might reach even a higher plane, in time. So, to be invited to call on a stout, respectable man who owned a corner store, and even had a horse and wagon, seemed to him quite an event.

“Do you know anything about earls and castles?” Mr. Hobbs inquired. “I’d like to know more of the particklars.”

“There’s a story about some on ’em in the _Penny Story Gazette_,” said Dick. “It’s called the ‘Crime of a Coronet; or, the Revenge of the Countess May.’ It’s a boss thing, too. Some of us boys’re takin’ it to read.”

“Bring it up when you come,” said Mr. Hobbs, “an’ I’ll pay for it. Bring all you can find that have any earls in ’em. If there aren’t earls, markises ’ll do, or dooks—though _he_ never made mention of any dooks or markises. We did go over coronets a little, but I never happened to see any. I guess they don’t keep ’em ’round here.”

“Tiffany’d have ’em if anybody did,” said Dick, “but I don’t know as I’d know one if I saw it.”

Mr. Hobbs did not explain that he would not have known one if he saw it. He merely shook his head ponderously.

“I s’pose there is very little call for ’em,” he said, and that ended the matter.

This was the beginning of quite a substantial friendship. When Dick went up to the store, Mr. Hobbs received him with great hospitality. He gave him a chair tilted against the door, near a barrel of apples, and after his young visitor was seated, he made a jerk at them with the hand in which he held his pipe, saying:

“Help yerself.”

Then he looked at the story papers, and after that they read, and discussed the British aristocracy; and Mr. Hobbs smoked his pipe very hard and shook his head a great deal. He shook it most when he pointed out the high stool with the marks on its legs.

“There’s his very kicks,” he said impressively; “his very kicks. I sit and look at ’em by the hour. This is a world of ups an’ it’s a world of downs. Why, he’d set there, an’ eat crackers out of a box, an’ apples out of a barrel, an’ pitch his cores into the street; an’ now he’s a lord a-livin’ in a castle. Those are a lord’s kicks; they’ll be an earl’s kicks some day. Sometimes I says to myself, says I, ‘Well, I’ll be jiggered!’”

He seemed to derive a great deal of comfort from his reflections and Dick’s visit. Before Dick went home, they had a supper in the small backroom; they had crackers and cheese and sardines, and other canned things out of the store, and Mr. Hobbs solemnly opened two bottles of ginger ale, and pouring out two glasses, proposed a toast.

“Here’s to _him_!” he said, lifting his glass, “an’ may he teach ’em a lesson—earls an’ markises an’ dooks an’ all!”

After that night, the two saw each other often, and Mr. Hobbs was much more comfortable and less desolate. They read the _Penny Story Gazette_, and many other interesting things, and gained a knowledge of the habits of the nobility and gentry which would have surprised those despised classes if they had realized it. One day Mr. Hobbs made a pilgrimage to a book store down town, for the express purpose of adding to their library. He went to a clerk and leaned over the counter to speak to him.

“I want,” he said, “a book about earls.”

“What!” exclaimed the clerk.

“A book,” repeated the grocery-man, “about earls.”

“I’m afraid,” said the clerk, looking rather queer, “that we haven’t what you want.”

“Haven’t?” said Mr. Hobbs, anxiously. “Well, say markises then—or dooks.”

“I know of no such book,” answered the clerk.

Mr. Hobbs was much disturbed. He looked down on the floor,—then he looked up.

“None about female earls?” he inquired.

“I’m afraid not,” said the clerk, with a smile.

“Well,” exclaimed Mr. Hobbs, “I’ll be jiggered!”

He was just going out of the store, when the clerk called him back and asked him if a story in which the nobility were chief characters would do. Mr. Hobbs said it would—if he could not get an entire volume devoted to earls. So the clerk sold him a book called “The Tower of London,” written by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and he carried it home.

When Dick came they began to read it. It was a very wonderful and exciting book, and the scene was laid in the reign of the famous English queen who is called by some people Bloody Mary. And as Mr. Hobbs heard of Queen Mary’s deeds and the habit she had of chopping people’s heads off, putting them to the torture, and burning them alive, he became very much excited. He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at Dick, and at last he was obliged to mop the perspiration from his brow with his red pocket handkerchief.

[Illustration: “WHY, BOSS!” EXCLAIMED DICK, “DO YOU KNOW HIM YOURSELF?”]

“Why, he aint safe!” he said. “He aint safe! If the women folks can sit up on their thrones an’ give the word for things like that to be done, who’s to know what’s happening to him this very minute? He’s no more safe than nothing? Just let a woman like that get mad, an’ no one’s safe!”

“Well,” said Dick, though he looked rather anxious himself; “ye see this ’ere un isn’t the one that’s bossin’ things now. I know her name’s Victohry, an’ this un here in the book,—her name’s Mary.”

“So it is,” said Mr. Hobbs, still mopping his forehead; “so it is. An’ the newspapers are not sayin’ anything about any racks, thumbscrews, or stake-burnin’s,—but still it doesn’t seem as if ’twas safe for him over there with those queer folks. Why, they tell me they don’t keep the Fourth o’ July!”

He was privately uneasy for several days; and it was not until he received Fauntleroy’s letter and had read it several times, both to himself and to Dick, and had also read the letter Dick got about the same time, that he became composed again.

But they both found great pleasure in their letters. They read and re-read them, and talked them over and enjoyed every word of them. And they spent days over the answers they sent, and read them over almost as often as the letters they had received.

It was rather a labor for Dick to write his. All his knowledge of reading and writing he had gained during a few months when he had lived with his elder brother, and had gone to a night-school; but, being a sharp boy, he had made the most of that brief education, and had spelled out things in newspapers since then, and practiced writing with bits of chalk on pavements or walls or fences. He told Mr. Hobbs all about his life and about his elder brother, who had been rather good to him after their mother died, when Dick was quite a little fellow. Their father had died some time before. The brother’s name was Ben, and he had taken care of Dick as well as he could, until the boy was old enough to sell newspapers and run errands. They had lived together, and as he grew older Ben had managed to get along until he had quite a decent place in a store.

“And then,” exclaimed Dick with disgust, “blest if he didn’t go an’ marry a gal! Just went and got spoony, an’ hadn’t any more sense left! Married her, an’ set up housekeepin’ in two back rooms. An’ a hefty un she was,—a regular tiger-cat. She’d tear things to pieces when she got mad,—and she was mad _all_ the time. Had a baby just like her,—yell day ’n’ night! An’ if I didn’t have to ’tend it! an’ when it screamed, she’d fire things at me. She fired a plate at me one day, an’ hit the baby—cut its chin. Doctor said he’d carry the mark till he died. A nice mother she was! Crackey! but didn’t we have a time—Ben ’n’ mehself ’n’ the young un. She was mad at Ben because he didn’t make money faster; ’n’ at last he went out West with a man to set up a cattle ranch. An’ he hadn’t been gone a week ’fore, one night, I got home from sellin’ my papers, ’n’ the rooms wus locked up ’n’ empty, ’n’ the woman o’ the house, she told me Minna’d gone—shown a clean pair o’ heels. Some un else said she’d gone across the water to be nuss to a lady as had a little baby, too. Never heard a word of her since—nuther has Ben. If I’d ha’ bin him, I wouldn’t ha’ fretted a bit—’n’ I guess he didn’t. But he thought a heap o’ her at the start. Tell you, he was spoons on her. She was a daisy-lookin’ gal, too, when she was dressed up, ’n’ not mad. She’d big black eyes ’n’ black hair down to her knees; she’d make it into a rope as big as your arm, and twist it ’round ’n’ ’round her head; ’n’ I tell you her eyes’d snap! Folks used to say she was part _I_tali-un—said her mother or father’d come from there, ’n’ it made her queer. I tell ye, she was one of ’em—she was!”

He often told Mr. Hobbs stories of her and of his brother Ben, who, since his going out West, had written once or twice to Dick. Ben’s luck had not been good, and he had wandered from place to place; but at last he had settled on a ranch in California, where he was at work at the time when Dick became acquainted with Mr. Hobbs.

“That gal,” said Dick one day, “she took all the grit out o’ him. I couldn’t help feelin’ sorry for him sometimes.”

They were sitting in the store door-way together, and Mr. Hobbs was filling his pipe.

“He oughtn’t to ’ve married,” he said solemnly, as he rose to get a match. “Women—I never could see any use in ’em, myself.”

As he took the match from its box, he stopped and looked down on the counter.

“Why!” he said, “if here isn’t a letter! I didn’t see it before. The postman must have laid it down when I wasn’t noticin’, or the newspaper slipped over it.”

He picked it up and looked at it carefully.

“It’s from _him_!” he exclaimed. “That’s the very one it’s from!”

He forgot his pipe altogether. He went back to his chair quite excited and took his pocket-knife and opened the envelope.

“I wonder what news there is this time,” he said.

And then he unfolded the letter and read as follows:

“DORINCOURT CASTLE

“My dear Mr Hobbs

“i write this in a great hury becaus i have something curous to tell you i know you will be very mutch suprised my dear frend when i tel you. It is all a mistake and i am not a lord and i shall not have to be an earl there is a lady whitch was marid to my uncle bevis who is dead and she has a little boy and he is lord fauntleroy becaus that is the way it is in England the earls eldest sons little boy is the earl if every body else is dead i mean if his farther and grandfarther are dead my grandfarther is not dead but my uncle bevis is and so his boy is lord Fauntleroy and I am not becaus my papa was the youngest son and my name is Cedric Errol like it was when I was in New York and all the things will belong to the other boy i thought at first i should have to give him my pony and cart but my grandfarther says i need not my grandfarther is very sorry and i think he does not like the lady but preaps he thinks dearest and i are sorry becaus i shall not be an earl i would like to be an earl now better than i thout i would at first becaus this is a beautifle castle and i like every body so and when you are rich you can do so many things i am not rich now becaus when your papa is only the youngest son he is not very rich i am going to learn to work so that I can take care of dearest i have been asking Wilkins about grooming horses preaps i might be a groom or a coachman, the lady brought her little boy to the castle and my grandfarther and Mr. Havisham talked to her i think she was angry she talked loud and my grandfarther was angry too i never saw him angry before i wish it did not make them all mad i thort i would tell you and Dick right away becaus you would be intrusted so no more at present with love from

“your old frend

“CEDRIC ERROL (Not lord Fauntleroy).”

Mr. Hobbs fell back in his chair, the letter dropped on his knee, his penknife slipped to the floor, and so did the envelope.

“Well!” he ejaculated, “I am jiggered!”

He was so dumbfounded that he actually changed his exclamation. It had always been his habit to say, “I _will_ be jiggered,” but this time he said, “I _am_ jiggered.” Perhaps he really _was_ jiggered. There is no knowing.

“Well,” said Dick, “the whole thing’s bust up, hasn’t it?”

“Bust!” said Mr. Hobbs. “It’s my opinion it’s all a put-up job o’ the British ’ristycrats to rob him of his rights because he’s an American. They’ve had a spite agin us ever since the Revolution, an’ they’re takin’ it out on him. I told you he wasn’t safe, an’ see what’s happened! Like as not, the whole gover’ment’s got together to rob him of his lawful ownin’s.”

He was very much agitated. He had not approved of the change in his young friend’s circumstances at first, but lately he had become more reconciled to it, and after the receipt of Cedric’s letter he had perhaps even felt some secret pride in his young friend’s magnificence. He might not have a good opinion of earls, but he knew that even in America money was considered rather an agreeable thing, and if all the wealth and grandeur were to go with the title, it must be rather hard to lose it.

“They’re trying to rob him!” he said, “that’s what they’re doing, and folks that have money ought to look after him.”

And he kept Dick with him until quite a late hour to talk it over, and when that young man left, he went with him to the corner of the street; and on his way back he stopped opposite the empty house for some time, staring at the “To Let,” and smoking his pipe, in much disturbance of mind.

(_To be continued._)

[Illustration: WAITING FOR A COLD WAVE.]

A ROYAL FISH.

BY RIPLEY HITCHCOCK.

[Illustration]

When the Hudson River was first seen by St. Nicholas, or rather by his image, which was the figure-head of the Dutch ship Goode Vrouw, there were more salmon in the water than there were wild grapes about the Indian wigwams which stood where New York City stands to-day. That was a few years after the rediscovery of the river by Henry Hudson in 1609.[2] But, in course of time, the salmon went the way of the Indians. The last native Hudson River salmon was caught in a net in New York bay about 1844; but, more recently, attempts have been made artificially to stock that river and others with this fish, and within two years a few have been caught, the only salmon taken from the Hudson in forty years.[3] When St. Nicholas made his first visit to our shores, there were salmon in every river along the Atlantic coast, north of the Delaware. But, as fishermen became numerous, as dams were built across the rivers, and as the water was made impure by town and city drainage, the salmon were driven northward, just as the Indians were driven westward. The salmon were forced to leave the Connecticut—another river into which there has been hope of introducing them again; they left the Merrimac when it was given over to manufactories; and now few salmon are to be found south of the rivers of eastern Maine. Beyond, they visit the rivers of the British Provinces, Labrador, the Hudson Bay country, and even Greenland,—for one variety of salmon is a fearless Arctic explorer, and penetrates the Arctic Circle. The salmon is as much at home in Iceland and Norway as in England, Scotland, and Ireland. On the north-western American coast, from northern California, Oregon, and Washington, to Alaska and beyond, there have always been vast numbers of this wonderful fish.

I say wonderful, because the salmon is the king of all game fishes, and because he goes under so many names, and has habits so curious that he has puzzled naturalists for hundreds of years. And his pink flesh is so prized that the salmon fisheries on this continent alone yield millions of dollars every year.

[Illustration]

The gamy qualities of the salmon, which cause the fly-fisherman to rate him above all other fishes, are his enduring strength and his great activity. The salmon and the blue-fish are the strongest game fishes known, and the former reaches a far larger size than the latter. According to one writer, “the salmon and the sword-fish are the fastest swimmers of all the forked-tail fishes.” Only a fast running-horse could outstrip a salmon; for it is estimated that the salmon swims a mile in less than two minutes. But the horse would be left behind in a long race, for the fish can cover thirty miles in an hour. When leisurely ascending rivers, with frequent rests in attractive pools, the salmon averages from fifteen to twenty-five miles a day. In leaping, the salmon can easily beat the horse, for salmon have leaped up waterfalls twelve feet high. It was formerly supposed that the salmon, when about to jump, bent himself double, and took his tail in his mouth, so that he was like an elastic bow drawn tight. Then it was thought that he suddenly let go, his tail striking the water with great force, and away he went through the air. But now we know that the salmon prepares for a leap just as a boy does, with a short, sharp run. If the water at the foot of the dam or fall is not deep enough to allow this preparatory run, the salmon can not jump. If there is water enough, he starts from the bottom, his powerful tail working as rapidly as the propeller-screw of a steamship. Aided by the pectoral fins, the upward movement grows quicker and quicker, until with a last muscular effort the salmon shoots from the water, his tail still vibrating for an instant, then becoming motionless, as the fish curves through the air and comes down above the obstacle. If a dam be built so high as to be impassable, the salmon will leave the river altogether, for instinct always leads them to the head-waters, where they lay their eggs. So fish-ladders and fish-ways of various kinds have been invented to help salmon and other fishes to surmount natural or artificial barriers. Fish-ladders have been constructed by the aid of which salmon ascend falls over thirty feet high. As soon as salmon enter rivers on their way from the sea they begin to jump, like a crowd of boys just let out of school. Standing on the shore of a salmon river in June or July, you will every now and then see the fish leap four or five feet out of water, glistening like polished silver, then curving over and falling with a heavy splash. Or sometimes their back fins will roll lazily out of the water, and you will be reminded of a school of porpoises. But there is nothing lazy about the salmon when once he is hooked. If there is a twenty-five pound salmon at the end of your line, jumping nearly as high as your head in his struggles to rid himself of the hook, you will be sure to think of nothing except that fish.

[Illustration: SALMON FLIES.]

But before the salmon reaches a weight of twenty-five pounds, he appears in so many and so different forms that very wise men have been unable to recognize him. When the salmon is just hatched, he is known as fry, or fingerling. Then he becomes a parr, or samlet, also called pink, or brandling, on some foreign rivers. The parr changes to a smolt, the smolt to a grilse, and the grilse finally develops into the salmon. The latter, when running fresh from the sea, are called white salmon, and when they are descending rivers after spawning, they are termed kelts, or black salmon. Other names given to salmon after spawning-time are kippers and baggits, or shedders. So the salmon, like the royal fish that he is, has as many names as a prince of one of the royal families of Europe. The alevin, or baby salmon, is hatched in from thirty to one hundred days after the eggs are laid in furrows in gravelly beds which are scooped out by the parent fish, near the head-waters of cold, clear rivers. Presently the alevin grows into the fry, or pink, which is an absurd little fish about an inch long, goggle-eyed, and with dark bars on its sides. When some three months old, the fry makes a change like that of a chrysalis into a butterfly. It becomes a shapely little fish with a forked tail, and brilliant carmine spots shine out on its sides. Its back is of a dark slaty color, and the bars are less strongly marked as the parr grows older. The greediest of trout is not more hungry and active. I have often seen a dozen tiny parr jump from the water at my flies. Once, when coming down the Restigouche in a canoe, with our rods laid aside, and the flies dangling just over the water, two parr leaped together and hooked themselves, although they were hardly four inches long. These pretty little fishes, which one might readily mistake for trout, were once supposed to belong to a species entirely distinct from the salmon. Naturalists were also puzzled by finding that some parr remain for nearly three years in fresh water. So they concluded that these latter parr never went to sea at all, and considered them a species by themselves, which they called _Salmo samulus_. But nature was finally seen to be wiser than the naturalists. Nature has decreed that only half the parr hatched in a given winter shall go down to the sea at one time, and in this way protects the race from the chance of wholesale destruction. So we are now told that some of the parr develop more rapidly than others, and migrate to the sea in their second spring, while others remain in the river a year longer, and some for still another year.

[Illustration: A FISH-LADDER AROUND A DAM.]

When the time for this migration approaches, the parr, which has been steadily growing plumper, undergoes another curious change. The carmine spots fade out, and the soft skin becomes covered with silvery scales which obscure the dark bars on the sides, although the scales can easily be rubbed away. At this period the young salmon is called a smolt, and the smolt was also a riddle to wise men, for a long time. It was thought that smolts which went down to the sea weighing three or four ounces, returned to the rivers in three months weighing six or eight pounds. Of course, such a gain as this was a very wonderful, indeed an unequaled performance, like the “swellin’ wisibly” of the Fat Boy in the “Pickwick Papers.” It is now believed, however, that the smolt requires a year or fifteen months at sea for this great gain in weight. Then he returns to his native river, no longer an insignificant smolt, but a vigorous, beautiful grilse. The grilse is more slender than the salmon, the tail more forked, the scales more easily removed, and the top of the head and of the fins is not quite so black. But the grilse’s sheeny, satiny sides are even more brilliant than the salmon’s, and it is more playful and active, although its strength is less enduring. After the grilse has frolicked its way to the head of the river and spawned, it returns to the sea. When it visits the river again, the next year, it has become a full-grown salmon. These are the successive stages of the salmon’s life.

But, even in the last and most familiar stage, the salmon’s habits are not fully understood. It is known that both young and old salmon, after descending a river, remain for a time in the brackish water at the river’s mouth, where they get rid of fresh-water parasites which have become attached to their sides, and where their scales are hardened by a diet of small fish; but where in the sea salmon go, no one knows. After leaving the coast, they disappear. They have been found in very deep water hundreds of miles from any salmon river; but their marine feeding-grounds are still undiscovered. In the spring they suddenly re-appear at the mouths of rivers, where they linger to free themselves from marine parasites. While in salt water, they will never jump at a fly; but as soon as they enter the fresh water of the Canadian rivers, in June, the waiting Indians and fishermen see them rising freely out of the water. Yet much of this leaping is plainly only for sport, and many people claim that salmon actually eat nothing at all during the time that they are going up rivers. These rivers offer a succession of pools and rapids. In almost every pool, during the day-time in summer, there are salmon resting from the labor of stemming the current. It is said that at night they are often to be found on the bars in the shallow rapids above the pools. If the water is low they ascend very slowly, but any rise in the river stimulates them into a rapid movement upward. When they descend rivers, they fall back much of the way tail foremost, although the distance may be over a hundred miles. Even a salmon can be drowned in swiftly running water. Often they make short runs down river, but they quickly wheel about and usually lie with their heads to the current. When they are descending, they are thin and ravenous; but they rapidly gain in plumpness after reaching the sea. In weight the salmon of the Canadian rivers average between twenty and twenty-five pounds. I suppose a season’s catch would hardly average more than twenty pounds, for it would include many grilse of from eight to ten pounds weight, and salmon weighing only five or six pounds more. A thirty-pound salmon is very large, and a forty-pound fish will be talked of throughout the season, although it is said that salmon weighing fifty pounds have been caught in the Restigouche,—one, indeed, was said to weigh fifty-four pounds. The Princess Louise, the daughter of the Queen of England and the wife of the Marquis of Lorne, the former Governor-general of Canada, caught a forty-pound salmon in the Causapscal river, in the province of Quebec, a few years ago. Last summer I employed one of the two canoe-men who were with the Princess at the time, and he had a great deal to say about her skill in handling that salmon. I don’t think he cared much about other members of the royal family, but “The Princess, sir, she was a good un with the rod.” Salmon weighing sixty pounds are taken now and then in Scotch rivers, and a few rivers in England still yield large fish. Sir John Hawkins speaks of a salmon caught in an English river in April, 1789, which was four feet long, three feet around the body, and weighed seventy pounds. There is a story told of a Highlander who hooked a salmon in the River Awe, and played the fish for hours, until night came on without his being able to tire it out. Then, as the fish was sulking quietly at the bottom, he lay down, took the line in his teeth, that any motion might waken him, and went to sleep. The Highlander slept and the salmon sulked until three o’clock in the morning, when some friends of the former came to look for him. With their help he managed to land the fish about daybreak, and it weighed seventy-three pounds. That was certainly a giant, but a salmon weighing eighty-three pounds is reported once to have been sent to the London market. It would be a serious matter for any of ST. NICHOLAS’S readers to make fast to a salmon as large as that. But it will not happen on this side of the ocean.

[Illustration: A SALMON POOL.]

[Illustration: SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.]

There is only one way in which a true sports-man will catch a salmon, and that is by fly-fishing. But there are a great many other ways, some of which, although unfair, are rather curious. Salmon have been caught with an ax, with a pitchfork, with a wheel, with many forms of nets and spears, by trolling, and by still-bait fishing. Captain Charles Kendall, an old Boston sailor, used to say that he once explored a Canadian salmon river nearly to its head and met a multitude of salmon coming down in water so shallow that their backs were exposed, and he killed scores with an ax, as they tried to rush between his legs. The poor fishes were also attacked by birds of prey. This is the only instance recorded of killing salmon with an ax, but when I visited the valley of the Puyallup River, in Washington Territory, three years ago, I was assured that salmon sometimes crowded that shallow stream so thickly that farmers lifted them out with pitchforks and used them as fertilizers on the field. These, however, were an inferior kind of salmon. One of the most cruel and destructive methods of catching salmon was by water-wheels, at the cascades of the Columbia River. In former times, the Indians gathered at the cascades at certain seasons, picketed their ponies, built wigwams, and remained for days, and often weeks, spearing and netting the ascending salmon all along the shores. But white men found a way of destroying a far larger number of these noble fish. Salmon when coming up the rapids swim near shore. Wheels were built, and suspended partly in the water so that the paddles were rapidly turned by the swift current. The salmon swimming against these paddles were struck with great force, lifted clear of the water, and thrown into tanks arranged near by. The murderous wheels kept on revolving, throwing up every fish within reach, and there was nothing for the owners to do but to gather the quantities of salmon out of the tanks and use them in their salmon-canning establishment. It is not strange that a strong popular feeling soon grew up against this wholesale slaughter.

[Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE METAPEDIA AND RESTIGOUCHE RIVERS,—A FAMOUS SALMON POOL.]

At the mouth of the same river, the Columbia, net-fishing for salmon is carried on in a larger way than anywhere else on this continent. In the fisheries and canneries nearly seven thousand men are employed—Swedes, Russians, Norwegians, Finns, Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, and Chinamen, a curious mingling of races. Much of this net-fishing is done at night, the sail boats starting from Astoria toward evening and returning in the morning. Sometimes the capsized boats drift ashore alone, for the breakers where the currents of river and ocean meet frequently swamp them, and each season many men are drowned. Between three and four million dollars’ worth of salmon have been sent from the Columbia in a year. In the North-east a great many salmon are caught in nets at the mouths of the St. Lawrence and other Canadian rivers, many more indeed than anglers would allow if they could control the net-fishing. Most of these salmon are artificially frozen and sent to our Eastern markets, where they now have to compete with Oregon salmon. Spearing salmon is very properly forbidden by law in Canada. I have read an account of an odd method of harpooning salmon, which was practiced on a river in the Inverness district in Scotland. At one spot the river falls in a cascade through a narrow cleft in the rocks. Sitting beside this, the fisherman, who had a line attached to his spear, struck a salmon as it tried to leap up, let go his spear, keeping hold of the line, and then, climbing down to the pool below, drew in the exhausted fish at his leisure. This reminded me of an Indian on the Restigouche, who, I was told, used to throw his short spruce pole into the water after hooking a salmon, and paddle after it in his canoe, until the fish was so wearied by dragging the pole about, that the fisherman could easily land it. Still more curious is Sir Walter Scott’s account in his novel, “Red Gauntlet,” of salmon-spearing on the Solway Frith, an arm of the sea between England and Scotland. He describes a company of horsemen riding over the sands and striking with their spears at the salmon which darted about in the pools, where they had been left by the ebbing tide. This kind of salmon-fishing on horseback must have been very like “pig-sticking” in India.

[Illustration: A SALMON RISING TO THE FLY.]

On this side of the ocean, trolling for salmon is unknown; there is very little, if any, bait-fishing, and a salmon-spear, in the North-east at least, is only to be found in the hands of a red or white poacher. Poaching on Canadian rivers has diminished, but the law is still broken on the sly; and many odd stories are told of poachers’ tricks. Nearly all these rivers are watched by two sets of wardens. There are the Government wardens appointed to prevent illegal fishing with nets or spears, or out of season, and there are wardens employed by private persons to watch the water which they lease; for every pool in a salmon river is valuable property. Once the Government claimed the fishing privileges, but it was decided that the owners of lands along the rivers controlled the water; and now the farmer’s income from his water is sometimes larger than that from his land; and the limits of each ownership are as carefully marked off as are limits of farms or of town lots. The unlawful act which the wardens most carefully guard against is “drifting.” One or two poachers will steal out at night carrying a peculiarly made net in their canoes. They stretch this across the head of a pool; and it is so weighted and buoyed that it stands upright, reaching nearly to the bottom. As the current causes the net to drift down stream, one canoe stays at each end to keep it straight. There is usually a white rope at the bottom of the net. Seeing this, the salmon raise themselves a little, only to be caught by the gills in the meshes. When the shaking of the net shows that one is caught, the poacher quickly paddles to the spot, raises the net, kills the fish with a blow on its head, and throws it into the canoe. In this sneaking way, nearly all the salmon in a pool may be netted out in a night. If the wardens happen to come along in their dug-outs, they try to seize the net and identify the poachers. Then there may be a fight, and perhaps a canoe will be sunk, and a poacher or a warden will get a cold bath. On one river, the poachers used to station a boy on an island below them, with a horn which he blew whenever the wardens approached. One of the latter was so active that the poachers resolved to punish him. They took an old worthless net and stretched it out into the river from a rock on the bank. A rope was rove through the net and the shore end made fast over a pulley to the traces of a horse. A boy stood beside the horse, and two poachers in a canoe held the outer end of the net. Down came the warden, poling along in his dug-out, and pulled the end of the net away from the seemingly unwilling poachers. He began taking it into his dug-out, congratulating himself on his prize, and had hauled it halfway in, when the boy on shore struck the horse, which started on a full gallop up the bank, jerking the net after it. In a flash the net was pulled out of the dug-out, the latter upset, and the astonished warden pitched into the river. But I hope the poachers were punished in their turn. For if these lawless men had their way, there would be no salmon left in the rivers, and no such glorious sport as fly-fishing.

It is for this that hundreds of Americans go away down East every summer. At the junction of the Metapedia and Restigouche rivers are the comfortable buildings of the Restigouche Salmon Club, which is composed of New York gentlemen. In front of the club-house is the finest pool on the river, and the club owns land and water for some miles above. Below, several pools are leased by a small American club, and Americans pay thousands of dollars for fishing privileges on rivers all the way from Nova Scotia to Labrador. Some of my boy readers may have accompanied their fathers or big brothers to Canadian salmon rivers, and themselves landed salmon. If not, I hope they may do so soon.

[Illustration: “RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES, THE GREAT FISH LEAPS FOUR FEET FROM THE WATER.”]

For this fishing, a boy should use a rod not over sixteen feet long, and weighing about twenty-seven ounces. Split bamboo is the finest material, but satisfactory rods are made of ash and lancewood or greenheart. The heavy reel holds a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards of braided silk line. Usually a gut leader, also called a casting-line, which is about nine feet long, is fastened directly to the silk line. Only one of the large gaudy salmon flies is used on the leader at one time. Suppose yourself thus equipped, sitting in the middle of a cranky birch-bark canoe, on the Restigouche, with an Indian at the bow and another at the stern, paddling to the head of a salmon pool, as the morning mists rise from the mountains. Just below the rapids, the Indians turn the canoe into midstream and drop the anchor, which clinks musically upon the stones of the bottom. You take up the rod, which will seem awkward if you have been using a seven or eight ounce trout-rod, and holding it in both hands, one above and one below the reel, begin to make short casts in front and on either side. It is always well to whip the water near the canoe, for there is no telling where a salmon may be. Once I looked down over the side of my canoe into the very eyes of a large salmon. He lay at the bottom, looking up at me for a moment, then flirted his tail scornfully and disappeared. I should like to have seen more of him. You will lengthen out the line a few feet at a time, as you continue casting, and you will always keep the point of your rod moving a little up and down, so that your fly shall be in motion in the water. Possibly the longed-for salmon will jump out of water at the fly. If so, he will probably miss it. More likely, you will suddenly see a mighty swirl in the water, catch a glimpse of a head, perhaps, and feel a tug—at least you are likely to, if you “strike” when you see the swirl.

Then all in the same instant the reel begins to scream and your heart to beat like a trip-hammer. Up comes the anchor, the Indians paddle over to one side of the river, and you manfully keep the rod pointing upward, clutching it with your left hand above the reel, the end of the butt pressed against your waistcoat buttons, and your right hand ready to reel in line if the fish comes toward you or sulks at the bottom.

All at once something happens which takes away your breath. Right before your eyes the great fish leaps four feet from the water, his writhing body curved like a silver bow, and glistening in the sunlight until he falls back with a splash that almost makes your heart stop beating, for fear he has broken loose. But no! You instinctively lowered the tip of your rod when he jumped, and he did not fall upon a taut line, as he hoped, and break away. The reel screams again as the salmon darts off down river; and as the canoe-men paddle after, you think of the Indian who lassoed the locomotive. Perhaps he will rush through the lower rapids into the pool below. Never fear! He is well hooked, and the strain of the rod is telling. Backward and forward he darts, while the line cuts the water, now sulking quietly, again startling you by a wild leap. At last he begins to yield. The canoe-men paddle you to a beach where you cautiously step out, keeping your face to the foe. Slowly, carefully you reel in line, straining the fish toward you. The Indians wait with the gaff, a large steel hook in the end of a stout pole. Now the salmon makes a despairing run, then, growing weaker, he obeys your strain. You can see him plainly as he comes into shallow water. What if you should lose him now! The Indians, bent double, ankle-deep in water, watch his every motion. One strikes at him, but misses, and the gallant fish makes another fight for life. But now he is within reach. The gaff is raised carefully, you hold your breath, and this time the steel pierces that silvery side, and out of the foaming water the gaff draws a noble salmon, your first—and let me hope a forty-pounder. Perhaps twenty minutes have passed since you hooked him,—perhaps an hour; but you have lived an age.

May all the boy readers of ST. NICHOLAS some time know such thrilling sport as this! And the girls, too, may emulate their brothers, and each some time land a salmon. At least they can have the sport without holding the rod. One of the prettiest sights which I saw on the Restigouche was the eager face of a little girl in a canoe, with her father, who was fighting a twenty-five-pound salmon. Looking at her parted lips and wide-open eyes, I felt sure that girls as well as boys could feel the fascination of that most exciting of all forms of angling, salmon-fishing.

[Illustration]

[2] Verrazani, a Florentine navigator, is now believed to have been the original discoverer of the Hudson, about 1525.

[3] About three hundred thousand salmon fry have been planted in the upper waters of the Hudson each year, since 1882. In 1884, a salmon weighing four pounds was taken near Hudson, New York, and several yearling salmon were caught, a year ago, in a stream tributary to the Hudson. Last spring, a salmon weighing ten pounds was taken in Gravesend Bay, and there have been other similar results from the work done by Mr. Fred Mather, Superintendent of the New York Fish Commission, in charge of the station at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It is thought that the Hudson was never much frequented by salmon for the purpose of spawning, on account of Cohoes’ and Miller’s Falls. But the fish were formerly taken near the mouth of the river, and it is hoped that the entire river may be made a salmon stream, if it will “grow salmon,” by the construction of fish-ways which will enable the salmon to ascend the falls. Professor Baird, the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, restocked the Connecticut, where no salmon had been for twenty-five years, with such success that “Connecticut River salmon” were regularly quoted in the markets. But the fishermen caught out the spawning fish and foolishly depopulated the river so that the work was stopped, although I understand that another effort has been made recently. In the Penobscot River, in Maine, salmon have been hatched and cared for, until, this very season, there has been excellent salmon fishing in the neighborhood of the city of Bangor.—R. H.

THE OWL, THE BAT, AND THE BUMBLE-BEE.

(_A Nonsense Rhyme._)

BY LAURA E. RICHARDS.

[Illustration]

The brown owl sat on the caraway tree, A ruffed-up, great big owl. Who so learnéd and wise as he? A puffed-up, eminent fowl. The black bat hung by a twig of the tree, A blinking, blind old bat. And buzzing anear was the bumble-bee, Crinkling, yellow, and fat.

“Ho!” said the owl, “but the sun is so bright, So torrid, blazing away!” “Oh,” said the bat, “for the shades of night, This horrid dazzling day!” “Psho!” said the bee. “If that is all, Blundery, blind old bat, Yonder’s a cloud coming up at your call,— Thundery,—black as a hat.”

“Ah!” cried the bat and the owl together, “Tumbling great black Cloud, Bring us some fine dark thundery weather, Rumbling fierce and loud!”

Up came the cloud, flying far and wide, Wizardly weird and strong,— Brisk little hurricane sitting inside, Blizzardly bowling along.

Off went the owl like a thistle-down puff, Ruffled-up, rolled in a ball! Off went the bat like a candle-snuff, Shuffled-up, toes and all! Off went the twig and off went the tree, Scurrying down to the ground! Nothing was left, save the bumble-bee, Worrying thus to be found; Yet snug as a bug in the roots of the tree, Where he grumbled; “What a catastrophe! I was simply thunder-struck!” said he. “And I’m very sure I prefer the glare Of the hottest day to that whirling air! Such a draught! I hope I have not caught cold! But I know I was over and over rolled. Am I really safe and sound?”

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Ho! ho! quoth a jolly old knight, Pray what is the meaning of Fright? But his friends only smile For they know all the while He is sadly addicted to—

Flight.

THE NOTIONAL NIGHTINGALE.

BY A. R. WELLS.

[Illustration]

King Hubert, he went to the forest in state, In glitter and gold, on a sun-shiny day, And commanded his train in the shadow to wait, While a herald proclaimed in the following way:

“His Imperial Majesty, Hubert the Second, Since the nightingale’s voice is quite musical reckoned, Is graciously pleased, as the day seems too long, To command that the nightingale sing him a song!”

The court all stood waiting for what might befall; But somehow, no nightingale answered the call.

NAN’S REVOLT.

BY ROSE LATTIMORE ALLING.