Be that as it may, however, it is known as Buel’s Spoon; it is made by fastening two or three hooks back to back, and attaching a piece of tin nearly elliptical in shape, so that it can revolve freely round a collar at the shank. This is its simplest form, and the one preferred for mascallonge, for which two strong thick hooks are used, firmly soldered together; and for pickerel, black-bass, and lake-trout, it is safer to have the hooks either soldered into one piece or attached by wire, as the fierce struggles and sharp teeth of these species will soon destroy thread or silk. The tin is painted of various colors, or even replaced with brass, and should be kept well burnished on the bright side. Feathers of gaudy colors, such as ibis, golden pheasant neck, mallard, and wood-duck, interspersed with plain white, are often fastened along the shank; spoons thus prepared are favorites of the black-bass, but have no advantage for mascallonge over the bare hooks; they are also used successfully for trout, especially those captured in salt water, and the feathers as well as the coloring of the tin may be adapted to the state of the weather. On clear, sunshiny days dull colors are preferable, as with artificial flies; and in dark or rainy weather the lightest colors answer best. Three additional hooks are sometimes added, and allowed to dangle loosely below the others; although these occasionally capture a fish that has missed striking the spoon fairly, they are more frequently bitten off; they are really no advantage, and if once imbedded in the bristling jaws of a gasping pickerel, their extraction is both difficult and dangerous.
Of the different varieties of artificial bait, not of course including the artificial fly, the most general and successful is Buel’s Spoon; it is taken by all the pickerel, from the monstrous mascallonge to the tiny native of Long Island; by the trout of lake or brook; by the black-bass of the North and South, and by the young blue-fish of the salt water; it is generally a greater favorite than the artificial, and sometimes even than the natural bait; with black-bass it has no competitor but the fly, and with sea-trout it occasionally surpasses the artificial fly itself. Its irregularity of motion, consequent upon the mode of revolution, seems to be its charm; and although it does not spin as well as the Archimedes, it is infinitely more killing. It has in open water almost supplanted the use of bait for pickerel and mascallonge, and it has been used to a murderous extent by greedy fishermen in trolling the waters of Moosehead Lake for trout.
COOKERY FOR SPORTSMEN.
Among all the arts and sciences that improve, elevate, or embellish society, or that contribute to the pleasure and comfort of mankind, the one that is the most necessary to health and happiness, has produced the fewest great geniuses, and is the least understood, is cookery. Amid the thousands of men and women who pretend to a knowledge of its mysteries, how difficult is it among the former, and how impossible among the latter, to find a good cook—one who is devoted heart and soul to the intricate science, who passes days in pondering and nights in dreaming of these delicate combinations that constitute pure and refined taste!
The world has produced in hundreds painters that delight the eye, composers that enrapture the ear, scholars that convince the intellect, poets that touch the heart; but of culinary artists that enchant the stomach, the truly great may be counted on the fingers. In ancient times more attention was paid to gastrology, but the degraded taste that could employ an emetic to enable the repetition of indulgence, and the limited resources of restricted national intercourse, have left us little of value to be gleaned for the experience of antiquity. The great masters of the kitchen of those times have passed away into oblivion, or have left only a few crude dishes, remarkable more for their extravagance than their excellence. It was a deficiency of knowledge and high art that drove the gourmands of early days to peacocks’ brains, nightingales’ tongues, and dissolved jewels.
The middle ages have left us some right royal dishes; the boar’s head, the roasted ox, the black pudding, mince-pies, the plum-pudding; remarkable, however, more for their substantial character that satisfied a vigorous appetite, than for delicacy that would gratify an educated taste. During this period, however, many drinks attained a perfection that has never been improved on, and those delicious combinations that were called cardinal, bishop, punch, and the hearty sack, are almost as well known and as great favorites now as then. There is nothing to be drawn from the dark ages in the least elevating to the science of gastronomy, and we must look to modern times, and mainly to the French nation, for our highest authorities and truest instruction.
Catherine de Medicis introduced the art of cookery into France, and liqueurs were invented during the reign of Louis XIV., since which time the revered names of Vatel, Soyer, Ude, Kitchiner, Bechamel, and Carmel have become household words throughout Christendom; their skill has shed a benign influence over mankind, has restored invalids to health, and brought peace to families; they are quoted and looked upon with deep respect by all. Coarse minds, to whom the allurements of gastronomy are incomprehensible, consider cooking vulgar; while a few pitiable individuals are created without the sense to distinguish the tasty from the tasteless, as there are persons without an eye for the beauties of nature or an ear for the harmony of sounds. These unfortunates deserve our sympathy; but for the individual who affects to despise the pleasures of the table, as loftily placing himself above what he terms grovelling appetites, nothing is appropriate but contempt. Who would believe or respect the man who claimed that his inability to distinguish green from red was a credit to him? Or could tolerate one who was filled with ostentatious pride because, by a wretched malformation, he could not tell Old Hundred from Casta Diva?
The sense of taste is as noble, and as capable of education and improvement, as the art of the painter or the musician. The stomach being the governor, master, and director of the body, when it is pleased the intellect works with force, the eye and ear are in full play, and the nerves and muscles tingle with animation; when it is sick or exhausted the eye grows dull, the intellect feeble, the ear inaccurate, and the whole body drooping and spiritless. It has its ramifications in every part of the system, and controls as inferiors the other organs. An ill-cooked dinner has lost many a battle, ruined many an individual, and disgraced many a genius; it is said that an indigestible ragout cost Napoleon his crown.
Life is dear to all, and yet persons are continually committing a disagreeable and prolonged suicide, accompanied with painful indigestions and untold sufferings, by attempting to despise the rules that the imperative stomach has laid down. Under certain well-known chemical laws, food is rendered both digestible and palatable by special modes of preparation, and indigestible and unpalatable by other modes. The same piece of meat that, fried, will resemble shoe-leather, and afford neither pleasure nor sustenance, if nicely broiled would prove agreeable to the palate and wholesome to the body.
Our country is overflowing with abundance of the raw material from which good dinners are made; but we are absolutely without cooks, and the average American life is shortened one-tenth by the miserable ignorance of the rules of cookery that pervades all classes. The farmer bolts his heavy griddle cakes and tasteless fried meats; while the wealthy citizen devours rich gravies and ill-prepared compounds. The former loses his teeth, the latter incurs the thousand horrors of dyspepsia, and both shorten their lives.