slowness.

The fine folks are more generally reformers and philanthropic in spirit. They have fallen in love with humanity (in the abstract), and they take an advanced stand. So did the leaders in my team; but they did not do much pulling. Do you know it is one of the easiest matters to take an advanced stand on great questions affecting a community? There is more reputation and glory to the square inch of merit in it than in any other position one can occupy. So there are people who make a dash in the closing hours of a great and patient work, and carry the laurels from the steady toilers, with those who do not know them. Usefulness and honesty are the broadest terms expressive of character. They are the sum of the most admirable qualities. When an honest man speaks, God listens. When an honest man comes to die, God says: "Get ye ready, my ministers; an honest man is dying. Gather the hosts, and go down to the gate. Open wide the portals, and when he comes, shout ye, shout ye, and bring him to this coronal of universal praise!"

"Just in the dubious point where with the pool
Is mixed the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollowed bank,
Reverted, plays in undulating flow,

There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly;
And, as as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game."

WITH

-THOMSON.

TH a friend, last spring, I went fishing. I had a twenty-five-dollar fishing-rod. I had the finest and most tempting bait. It was the right month in the year, and the right time in the month. It was the right sort of a day— a fresh, balmy atmosphere, and with the air so still that there was not a ripple on the surface of the waters. I also looked at the emboweled man in the almanac, and saw that the signs were right. I fished all day, and never got a nibble. I doubt if there was a fish in a mile of

the bait. Seines, and traps, and dynamite-these have played havoc with the fish. If Isaac Walton were living now, he would die of a broken heart.

Some visitor at Niagara wrote that you could get the use of a pole and a line there an hour for a dollar. You could get some bait for a dollar. You could also get a man to show you the best place to fish for a dollar. But there was no use, he said, in paying that last dollar; one place was as good as another-they did not bite anywhere. It makes no difference now where you fish. These are degenerate days.

The things that I tell you here are rather fishy; but I am to record the facts. Our house was a half mile from the Wabash and Erie Canal, the great enterprise before mentioned, extending from Evansville, northward and eastward, three hundred and seventy-four miles to the Ohio line. It was begun in 1832, and completed in 1853, at a cost of construction of over six millions. It never paid the hundreth part of one per cent on the investment. It went to decay, and to the fishes, soon after it was first put into running order. Its waters were alive with every variety of fish known to the rivers and lakes of the region. And in turn it became a great hatching-pool to stock the creeks, and more especially the reser

voir, which was its feeder at this point. Watermoss grew along the edges of the bed three or four feet out, and there was an equal space of clear water in the center. I have seen this open space black with fish for hundreds of yards in length.

One afternoon, when I had finished the first plowing of the corn in the bottom field, about three o'clock, I took an old rusty hook, and tied to it a string four feet long, pinched a bullet over it above the hook, tied the string to an ungainly pole, and, with angle-worms for bait, I caught in two hours a string of fish greater than I could lift into the wagon. The beauty of this fishing was in the fact that I could see the fish, and I disdained to put down the bait, except as the larger ones would be near to take it. I caught more than ten pounds of fish with one.

worm.

My first fishing alone, however, was for catfish. These are not a game fish, and you can put on your muscle and throw them into the trees behind you, if the size of the fish befits the feat. A catfish can make the greatest resistance to being pulled out of the water of any known. It is better to fish for him with a cork. He takes hold of the bait in such a bull-dog and definite

sort of way, that you can take your time to surprise him with the fact that he is snared. You can fish for catfish, and if they do not bite freely, you can take a nap between bites.

My place this afternoon, I tell you about, was at the first fork of a great tree that had been chopped into the lake, and whose top reached out into the deep water of the slough. It was a day for yellow-cat. I had taken quite a number of small ones and had re-baited, and had lain down on the log for a nap, really wishing to be let alone, and purposing to let the next meddler take the bait or snare himself. I had just gotten myself into position, when there was a great surge at the pole under me, and with my effort to get hold of it, before I could gain my purchase, another surge pulled me into the water. I lost my hold; but as soon as I found I could touch bottom, I made for the pole again. The strength of that fish, making for the channel, brought consternation to me. Time and again in my efforts to pull him ashore, I nearly lost my wits in the immensity of his plunges. In spite of myself, before he became worn out, he had taken me fifty feet out into the lake, where the depth of the water gave me little or no purchase. For a long time that day it was a question whether a boy would get a fish, or a fish