By some miracle of the eddy, however, the house stayed intact; but soon after they all moved away, to safer, and, I believe, more comfortable quarters.
The Lamont family lived a mile north of the Town. They had a ramshackle house and barn, in a bit of open meadow by the mouth of one of the brooks. You might say of the Lamonts that they were so steeped in river mud that every bone of them was lazy and easy and slack. There were the father and mother, and seven children. They were as unkempt and ragged as could be, but they always seemed cheerful and smiling, and the younger children were fat as little dumplings. The three eldest were shambling young men; they and the father seemed perfectly content with a little fishing and odd-jobbing, and now and then one of them took a turn as deck-hand or stevedore, or—as a last resort—as farm-hand. The girls and the mother dug and sold dandelion greens, dock, and thoroughwort and other old-fashioned simples.
None of them had ever gone to school a day beyond the time required by law, and they kept the truant officer busy at that; then all of a sudden the youngest and fattest Lamont, whose incongruous name was Hernaldo, appeared at the High School. He was an imperturbable child, and quite dull, but he worked with a cheerful slow patience. He only held on for a year, but no one had imagined he could keep on for so long, and he did not do badly.
The elders died before the younger children were quite grown, and the family scattered; one night, after it had been empty a year or two, the ramshackle house burned, leaving the barn standing.
One morning about ten years afterwards a radiant being appeared at the High School, a fat young man in frock coat and tall hat, who came forward and shook hands effusively. It was Hernaldo Lamont! He was now chef, it appeared, at one of the great California hotels through the winters, and in Vancouver in summer, at a very large salary. A pretty girl, charmingly dressed, whom he introduced as his wife, waited modestly at the door.
His clothes were quite wonderful. He was shining with soap and with fashion, and so full of warmth and of pleasure. He brought out colored photographs of his two fat little children, told of his staff and his patrons, beamed upon everyone, and showed his pretty wife all about our plain High School, admiring and reverent. I think that if it had been Oxford he could not have been prouder, and indeed Oxford could never be to the average student a place of higher achievement than High School to a Lamont!
He was so simple and kindly that I believe he would have taken his wife to the Lamont shanty as happily. The Lamont barn is still standing, grown up with tall nettles and dandelions. A farmer uses it for his extra hay, mowed in the low rich patches of river meadow. Tramps sleep in the hay, and quantities of barn-swallows flash in and out of the empty windows.
Long ago our River was one of the great salmon streams of the country. In my great grandfather’s time agreements between apprentices and servants, and their employers, held the stipulation that the employees should not have to eat salmon above five times in the week; and the fish were used for fertilizing the fields. There are none now at all, and the sturgeon fishing, which in my father’s boyhood used to make summer nights on the River a time of torchlit adventure, is over too, though still late on a summer afternoon you may see now and then a silver flash, and hear a crash, as the huge creature jumps; and only last week two sturgeon of over eight hundred pounds weight each were brought in right near the Town Bridge. They were caught by two hard-working lads, and brought them a little fortune, for they were sold in New York for over $250.
Not even the flight of the birds from the south, unbelievable in wonder as this is, is more miraculous than the run of the fish, from the vast spaces of ocean up all our fresh-water streams for hundreds of miles. Their bright thousands find their way unerringly, up into the heart of the country. No one knows whence they come, and save for an occasional straggler, no one has ever taken salmon or shad or ale-wife in deep water. We know their passage up-stream, but no one knows when they take their way down again.
The smelts run up, when winter is still at its height. They are caught through holes in the ice. The men build huts of boards or of boughs, each round his own smelt hole. They build a fire on the ice, or have a kerosene lantern or lamp, and fish thus all day in fair comfort. They catch smelts by thousands, so that our town’s people, who can eat them not two hours out of the water, are spoiled for the smelts which are called fresh in cities. Tom-cod come up a little ahead of the smelts.