Little Rivers [14]
eat, my boy, if I could only see that it did you any
good,"--which remark was not forgiven until the doctor redeemed his
reputation by pronouncing a serious medical opinion, before a
council of mothers, to the effect that it did not really hurt a boy
to get his feet wet. That was worthy of Galen in his most inspired
moment. And there was hearty, genial Paul Merit, whose mere
company was an education in good manners, and who could eat eight
hard-boiled eggs for supper without ruffling his equanimity; and
the tall, thin, grinning Major, whom an angry Irishwoman once
described as "like a comb, all back and teeth;" and many more were
the comrades of the boy's father, all of whom he admired, (and
followed when they would let him,) but none so much as the father
himself, because he was the wisest, kindest, and merriest of all
that merry crew, now dispersed to the uttermost parts of the earth
and beyond.
Other streams played a part in the education of that happy boy: the
Kaaterskill, where there had been nothing but the ghosts of trout
for the last thirty years, but where the absence of fish was almost
forgotten in the joy of a first introduction to Dickens, one very
showery day, when dear old Ned Mason built a smoky fire in a cave
below Haines's Falls, and, pulling The Old Curiosity Shop out of
his pocket, read aloud about Little Nell until the tears ran down
the cheeks of reader and listener--the smoke was so thick, you
know: and the Neversink, which flows through John Burroughs's
country, and past one house in particular, perched on a high bluff,
where a very dreadful old woman come out and throws stones at "city
fellers fishin' through her land" (as if any one wanted to touch
her land! It was the water that ran over it, you see, that carried
the fish with it, and they were not hers at all): and the stream at
Healing Springs, in the Virginia mountains, where the medicinal
waters flow down into a lovely wild brook without injuring the
health of the trout in the least, and where the only drawback to
the angler's happiness is the abundance of rattlesnakes--but a boy
does not mind such things as that; he feels as if he were immortal.
Over all these streams memory skips lightly, and strikes a trail
through the woods to the Adirondacks, where the boy made his first
acquaintance with navigable rivers,--that is to say, rivers which
are traversed by canoes and hunting-skiffs, but not yet defiled by
steamboats,--and slept, or rather lay awake, for the first time on
a bed of balsam-boughs in a tent.
III.
The promotion from all-day picnics to a two weeks' camping-trip is
like going from school to college. By this time a natural process
of evolution has raised the first rod to something lighter and more
flexible,--a fly-rod, so to speak, but not a bigoted one,--just a
serviceable, unprejudiced article, not above using any kind of bait
that may be necessary to catch the fish. The father has received
the new title of "governor," indicating not less, but more
authority, and has called in new instructors to carry on the boy's
education: real Adirondack guides--old Sam Dunning and one-eyed
Enos, the last and laziest of the Saranac Indians. Better men will
be discovered for later trips, but none more amusing, and none
whose woodcraft seems more wonderful than that of this queerly
matched team, as they make the first camp in a pelting rain-storm
on the shore of Big Clear Pond. The pitching of the tents is a
lesson in architecture, the building of the camp-fire a victory
over damp nature, and the supper of potatoes and bacon and fried
trout a veritable triumph of culinary art.
At midnight the rain is pattering persistently on the canvas; the
fronts flaps are closed and tied together; the lingering fire
shines through them, and sends vague shadows wavering up and down:
the governor is rolled up in his blankets, sound asleep. It is a
good,"--which remark was not forgiven until the doctor redeemed his
reputation by pronouncing a serious medical opinion, before a
council of mothers, to the effect that it did not really hurt a boy
to get his feet wet. That was worthy of Galen in his most inspired
moment. And there was hearty, genial Paul Merit, whose mere
company was an education in good manners, and who could eat eight
hard-boiled eggs for supper without ruffling his equanimity; and
the tall, thin, grinning Major, whom an angry Irishwoman once
described as "like a comb, all back and teeth;" and many more were
the comrades of the boy's father, all of whom he admired, (and
followed when they would let him,) but none so much as the father
himself, because he was the wisest, kindest, and merriest of all
that merry crew, now dispersed to the uttermost parts of the earth
and beyond.
Other streams played a part in the education of that happy boy: the
Kaaterskill, where there had been nothing but the ghosts of trout
for the last thirty years, but where the absence of fish was almost
forgotten in the joy of a first introduction to Dickens, one very
showery day, when dear old Ned Mason built a smoky fire in a cave
below Haines's Falls, and, pulling The Old Curiosity Shop out of
his pocket, read aloud about Little Nell until the tears ran down
the cheeks of reader and listener--the smoke was so thick, you
know: and the Neversink, which flows through John Burroughs's
country, and past one house in particular, perched on a high bluff,
where a very dreadful old woman come out and throws stones at "city
fellers fishin' through her land" (as if any one wanted to touch
her land! It was the water that ran over it, you see, that carried
the fish with it, and they were not hers at all): and the stream at
Healing Springs, in the Virginia mountains, where the medicinal
waters flow down into a lovely wild brook without injuring the
health of the trout in the least, and where the only drawback to
the angler's happiness is the abundance of rattlesnakes--but a boy
does not mind such things as that; he feels as if he were immortal.
Over all these streams memory skips lightly, and strikes a trail
through the woods to the Adirondacks, where the boy made his first
acquaintance with navigable rivers,--that is to say, rivers which
are traversed by canoes and hunting-skiffs, but not yet defiled by
steamboats,--and slept, or rather lay awake, for the first time on
a bed of balsam-boughs in a tent.
III.
The promotion from all-day picnics to a two weeks' camping-trip is
like going from school to college. By this time a natural process
of evolution has raised the first rod to something lighter and more
flexible,--a fly-rod, so to speak, but not a bigoted one,--just a
serviceable, unprejudiced article, not above using any kind of bait
that may be necessary to catch the fish. The father has received
the new title of "governor," indicating not less, but more
authority, and has called in new instructors to carry on the boy's
education: real Adirondack guides--old Sam Dunning and one-eyed
Enos, the last and laziest of the Saranac Indians. Better men will
be discovered for later trips, but none more amusing, and none
whose woodcraft seems more wonderful than that of this queerly
matched team, as they make the first camp in a pelting rain-storm
on the shore of Big Clear Pond. The pitching of the tents is a
lesson in architecture, the building of the camp-fire a victory
over damp nature, and the supper of potatoes and bacon and fried
trout a veritable triumph of culinary art.
At midnight the rain is pattering persistently on the canvas; the
fronts flaps are closed and tied together; the lingering fire
shines through them, and sends vague shadows wavering up and down:
the governor is rolled up in his blankets, sound asleep. It is a