Days in the Open

by Lathan A. Crandall

HAT’S that?”

The elect lady should have been asleep instead of sitting up in bed, an animated interrogation point, for the hour was late and the ride from Chicago that day had been hot and dusty and fatiguing.

“What’s what?” grunted the sleepy partner of her joys.

“That noise. Don’t you hear it? It sounds like a band playing in the distance.”

When this suggestion finally penetrated the semiconscious mind of the husband, the absurdity of the idea called forth certain emphatic if not convincing negative arguments, all of which were met with the puzzling query, “If it’s not a band, what is it?”

“That’s what I’ll soon find out,” answered the skeptic, as he arose to begin a serious investigation.

The noise was unmistakable; faint but clear, and from without. Approaching the window the noise became more distinct, but the character of it remained a mystery. Bands are not indigenous in rural districts, and no large town was near. With nose pressed against the window-screen in a vain effort to see everything within a radius of five miles, the explorer suddenly realized that the music was right at hand, and the musicians, in countless numbers, were separated from his face only by the wire netting. Mosquitoes? Exactly, and their name was legion. If night had suddenly turned to day one could not have seen anything through that window for the cloud of mosquitoes. New Jersey may justly boast of the size and ferocity of her mosquitoes, but for numbers Skegemog fears no rival.

It is more than probable that some reader will say to himself, “I wouldn’t stay in such a place.” Well, we stayed, not because of the pests, but in spite of them, and because they formed the only drawback to one’s enjoyment. The Lodge was on a point of land with water on three sides, the table was exceptionally satisfactory, the guests were congenial and the black bass never failed to respond promptly to our advances. What are a few mosquitoes, more or less, when such paradisaical conditions obtain?

To many people a bass is a bass, and that’s all there is to it. To be sure, they recognize the fact that some bass are larger than others, but the process of differentiation begins and ends with the table of weights and measures. Skegemog bass belong to the small-mouth family, and there is as much difference between these and the big-mouth variety as between a split-bamboo rod and a saw-log. The small-mouth is the aristocrat of the bass family. He is more dainty in his tastes, more plucky, and has more brains than his brother of the more generous facial opening.

And the small-mouth bass are not all alike. The marked differences seen in children of the same family are duplicated in the individuality shown by fish belonging to the same species. The bass whose home is in swift waters is a stronger, more tireless fighter than his brother of the lake. Of two bass living side by side in the same water, one may be logy and lazy and indisposed to strenuous exertion when hooked, while the other is brought to net only after he has tried every dodge known to fishdom and exhausted every atom of his strength.