“Look out for him!” cried Luke, as he came flying in the air. I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the boat; and when I picked my traps up he was spinning across the lake as if he had a new idea, but the line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave him the butt again, a thing he seemed to hate, even as a gift. In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the water in his rage, was coming back again, making straight for the boat as before. Luke, who was used to these encounters, having read them in the writings of travellers he had accompanied, raised his paddle in self-defence. The trout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was, of course, slack: and the danger was, that he would entangle it about me, and carry away one leg. This was evidently his game: but I untangled it, and only lost a breast-button or two by the swift-moving string. The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all the line on the reel. More butt, more indignation on the part of the captive. The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and I was getting exhausted. We had been back and forth across the lake, and around and around the lake. What I feared was, that the trout would start up the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he had a new fancy, and began the execution of a manœuvre which I had never read of. Instead of coming straight toward us, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit. I reeled in, and kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, narrowing the circle. I began to suspect the game, which was to twist my head off. When he had reduced the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water. It would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal to the occasion. Instead of turning around with him, as he expected, I stepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round went the fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcys all around the horizon; the rosy tint of the west made a broad bank of pink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfect circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled. I was willing to give the malicious beast butt and line and all, if he would only go the other way for a change.
When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side. After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of a pound! Fish always lose by being “got in and dressed.” It is best to weigh them while they are in the water. The only really large one I ever caught, got away with my leader when I first struck him. He weighed ten pounds.
Charles Dudley Warner.
AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE.
O good painter! tell me true, Has your hand the cunning to draw Shapes of things that you never saw? Ay? Well, here is an order for you.
Woods and cornfields, a little brown,— The picture must not be over-bright,— Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.
Alway and alway, night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, When the wind can hardly find breathing room Under their tassels; cattle near, Biting shorter the short green grass, And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, With bluebirds twittering all around,— (Ah, good painter, you can’t paint sound!)— These, and the house where I was born, Low and little, and black and old, With children, many as it can hold, All at the windows, open wide,— Heads and shoulders clear outside, And fair young faces all a-blush: Perhaps you may have seen, some day, Roses crowding the selfsame way, Out of a wilding wayside bush.
Listen closer. When you have done With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady the loveliest ever the sun Looked down upon, you must paint for me. Oh, if I only could make you see The clear blue eyes, the tender smile, The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace, The woman’s soul, and the angel’s face That are beaming on me all the while!— I need not speak these foolish words: Yet one word tells you all I would say,— She is my mother: you will agree That all the rest may be thrown away.
Two little urchins at her knee You must paint, sir: one like me,— The other with a clearer brow, And the light of his adventurous eyes Flashing with boldest enterprise: At ten years old he went to sea,— God knoweth if he be living now,— He sailed in the good ship Commodore: Nobody ever crossed her track To bring us news, and she never came back. Ah, ’tis twenty long years and more Since that old ship went out of the bay With my great-hearted brother on her deck; I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown, The time we stood at our mother’s knee: That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea!