" Do you regret that you were not born in the
city?"
" Regret it? Say, you are fooling. I wouldn't
trade the recollections of my boyhood on the farm
for the best business block in this city."
" But it can't be worth anything to you in a busi-
230 DAYS IN THE OPEN
ness way. Life in the country doesn't train one
to manufacture gas engines."
" Well, I've never stopped to consider what I
owe in the matter of business success to my boy-
hood in the country, but now that you raise the
question, I'm inclined to believe that it gave me
pretty good training in some ways for the business
in which I am engaged.
" When I came into this business at the age of
twenty I was given a place in the shipping depart-
ment at a salary of seven dollars per week. Now
I am at the head of the firm, while many of the
fellows who were with me in those days are still
working on salary. You see I had the advantage
of the city boys in being accustomed to work. On
the farm I had my regular tasks. Why, when I
was a little chap I wiped the dishes for mother,
and when I grew older I had to keep the wood-box
filled and go after the cows and pick up potatoes
and but you know what a lot of things there are
to do on a farm where 'a boy can help.
" Now that I think of it, I imagine that I was
learning application, industry and self-control
big assets in business. The city-bred boy has never
had that schooling. He has not been trained to
hold himself to hard and continued effort. It is
not his fault, and I do not know that his parents
are to be blamed. I have two boys of my own born
in the city, and one of the questions which per-
plexes me most is how to provide them with regular
BOY LIFE IN THE OPEN 231
tasks that shall develop their sense of responsibility
and cultivate habits of industry and application.
Although I could afford to have a man to take care
of the lawn and attend to the furnace, I have the
boys do this work for their own sakes. It is good
as far as it goes, but I am afraid it does not go far
enough. They have too much time to spend in do-
ing nothing, and habits of idleness formed in boy-
hood are likely to stick when one comes to man-
hood. I do not believe in manufacturing tasks or
setting them at work which is not real, for boys are
keen observers and you cannot fool them into be-
lieving that they are doing something worth while
when compelled to take wood from one corner of
the cellar and pile it in another corner, and then
shift it back again. The man who devises some
way of supplying real tasks for the boys of the
well-to-do city families will be a public benefactor.
" Now, that you have started the discussion of
this subject, how about the physical health and
strength that I brought from my country life to
the work which I am doing? Of course, we have
our sleeping porches and playgrounds and medical
inspection in the public schools, and are doing what
we can to build sound bodies for our city children,
but I suspect that the out-door life of the country
boy and his regular exercise and plain food furnish
a far and away better physical preparation for the
strenuous work of business life than anything we
are able to devise for our children in the city.
232 DAYS IN THE OPEN
" You never saw my old home, did you? Well,
the house stood at the foot of a hill and close by a
little stream. In the summer time the wild straw-
berries in the meadow above the orchard were so
thick that I remember picking a bushel there
one day. For raspberries and blackberries we
usually went some three or four miles to Babcock
Hollow, but once there you could fill a ten-quart
pail in no time at all, and they were the sweetest,
most luscious berries you ever tasted. Then, in the
fall, came apple picking and potato digging and
corn cutting and nut gathering. There were dozens
of butternut trees in the pasture-lot through which
the creek ran, and on Button Hill you could get all
the chestnuts you wished. Did you ever gather
beechnuts ? They are so little that picking them up
by hand is slow work. We used to take three or
four sheets, spread them under a beech tree, after
the first frost had opened the burrs, and then one
of the boys would climb the tree and pound the
limbs, sending the nuts down upon the sheets in
showers.
"But the winters! When there was a good
crust on the snow you could start on your sled at
the patch of woods on the top of the hill, nearly a
mile away, and ride right into our barnyard. I've
done it many a time. Skating! We could go al-
most straight away for miles on the river. One
night when Jim Gilbert's people were away from
home I got permission to stay all night with him.
BOY LIFE IN THE OPEN 233
I took my skates along and after supper we came
down to the river and skated. The moon was full
and it was almost as light as day. I must have been
careless, for I skated too near an open place and
broke through. Jim was just behind me, and, be-
fore he could stop or change his course, he had
stubbed his toe on me and in he went, head first.
The water was shallow, so there was no danger,
but we had a mile to walk in our wet clothes, and
all the way up hill. I remember that our clothes
were frozen stiff when we reached Jim's house.
We built a roaring fire, stripped off our wet
clothes and put on some that were dry, and then
sat up until one o'clock eating chestnuts and pop-
corn and talking about what we would do when
we were men. Jim had an idea that he would be
a lawyer, but the last time I saw him he was sell-
ing tooth paste at the county fair.
" In some ways spring in the country is not re-
markably attractive. The fields are brown and
bare and soggy, and the winds cannot fairly be
called zephyrs. As the frost leaves the ground the
roads become rivers of mud, and some of the " sink-
holes" seem bottomless. Early spring is easily
the most unlovely time of the year in the country,
but even then life has its brighter side. With the
first breath of the south wind the sap begins to
leave the roots of the hard maples and the sugar
season begins.
DAYS IN THE OPEN
" Did you ever work in a sugar-bush ? No ?
Poor fellow! You've missed something worth
while out of your life. I understand that nowa-
days they evaporate the sap in shallow pans; we
used to boil it in a big iron kettle. We did not have
many maples on our place, so I sometimes worked
for Deacon Bouton, who had the next farm west of
ours. He had a big sugar-bush, and we carried the
pails of sap on neck-yokes. When we had a big
run of sap we had to boil all night as well as during
the day. I'll never forget one night when we had
a feast. There were two boys besides myself : Ed
Bouton, the deacon's son, and John Hammond. Ed
had brought forty-five hen's eggs and John added
five goose eggs. We boiled the eggs in the sap, and
the three of us ate those forty-five hen's eggs and
started on the goose eggs. For some reason we did
not relish them. Possibly the hen's eggs had taken
the keen edge from our appetites.
" But how I'm running on ! Regret being born in
the country? Do you know that I can shut my
eyes and see the hills and meadows and orchard,
fairer than any ever put in colours on the canvas?
I can see the oriole's nest swinging from a branch
of the big elm in the corner of our yard and the
nest of the pewee under the bridge. Just across
the road in the meadow are glorious masses of
violets, and mother's peonies and sweet pinks beat
anything I've ever seen since. When I'm dog-
tired from the day's work it rests me just to think
BOY LIFE IN THE OPEN 235
of the quiet and calm and beauty of the old home
among the hills.
" And there's another thing that I want to tell
you: when I go into the country I can enjoy it.
One of my best friends, born in the city, is bored
almost to death every time he tries to take a vaca-
tion in the country. He doesn't know the differ-
ence between a hard maple and a tamarack, and
asked me once if a woodchuck was likely to attack
a human being if not angered. He's afraid of bees
and garter snakes, and even a friendly old " daddy-
long-legs " gives him a nervous shock. He can't
enjoy the fields and flowers, for he was brought
up on people and bricks. I'd like to be back there
at the old place this minute. I'll bet I could find
some raspberries on the bushes that grow in the
fence corners along the west road. We used to
string them on timothy stalks as we came home
from school, and I've never tasted any such berries
since."
The witness is through with his testimony and
we'll submit the case to the jury without argument.
What do you say, fathers and mothers of the city ?
Shall your children have a chance to learn nature's
secrets at first hand? Will you give them some
time in the open every year, where the work of man
has not elbowed the work of God into a corner and
out of sight? More, will you help to send the
children of the poor, children whose playground is
the city street, and to whom the stories of green
236 DAYS IN THE OPEN
fields and limpid streams and flowers that belong
to any who will gather them, sound like fairy
tales will you give to these children of the tene-
ment and the slums days where the sunshine is not
filtered through a bank of smoke and all the min-
istry of God's unspoiled work strengthens them
for the coming days of toil?
THE BULLY
OF THE
UPPER
OSWEGATCHIE
But should you lure from his
dark haunt, beneath the
tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the monarch of
the brook,
Behooves you then to ply your
finest art.
At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death,
With sullen plunge. At once he darts
along,
Deep-struck, and runs out all the length-
ened line ;
And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
Indignant of the guile. With yielding
hand,
That feels him still, yet to his furious
course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following
now
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage;
Till, floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandoned, to the shore
You gayly drag your unresisting prise.
JAMES THOMSON, The Seasons.
XVIII
THE BULLY OF THE UPPER
OSWEGATCHIE
'F the sucker had gone twenty
feet farther up the little brook on
his foraging expedition this story
would not have been written.
However, by the time he had ap-
propriated some ten thousand
trout eggs, the hunger which had urged him into
the mouth of the brook deserted him, and, as the
water was too cold for his liking, he made his way
back to the river where he could take a siesta in the
pool that he had left that morning.
Just above the spot where the sucker turned
about was a bend in the stream, and, passing that,
you came upon a reach of shallow water running
over the most beautiful bed of gravel in that whole
section. It was here that the Bully was born, in the
afternoon of the very day when destruction in the
239
240 DAYS IN THE OPEN
form of a predatory sucker came so near to him.
Not that he appeared much like a bully in those first
hours of conscious existence. In fact he looked
more like an animated sliver with a sack suspended
from underneath. He moved slowly about the
stream in company with a hundred or so other little
fellows until the sack had disappeared, and then it
was easy to see that he had the advantage of all
his comrades in the matter of size at least.
When they began feeding upon the tiny forms
of life found in the creek, the Bully soon gained a
reputation for pugnaciousness. He did not hesitate
to crowd his best friend away from a larva, and,
before he was an inch long, he had bitten the left
pectoral fin from one of his comrades who had ven-
tured to resist the Bully's attempt to rob him of a
luscious little snail that he had discovered. One
day when the Bully was yet a fingerling he joined
battle with a chub twice his size, and, although he
lost a part of his tail in the fray, and all the specta-
tors thought he was whipped before the conflict had
fairly begun, the thought of giving up never oc-
curred to him, and he fought until his foe turned
tail and fled into the river, a quarter of a mile
away.
He was still living in the brook and had come
to be almost four inches in length when he had
an experience that shook his nerves somewhat.
As he was resting beside a sod a little worm, all
bent out of shape, but undeniably of the vermes
THE BULLY OF THE OSWEGATCHIE
family, came floating down the stream and he
promptly grabbed it. Then came a sharp prick in
his lip and something was pulling him out from
under the sod. He braced and twisted and threshed
about, but all in vain. Up he went out of the water,
all the time doing fancy somersaults such as he
had never attempted before. A moment later he
struck the water with a splash and was soon safely
hidden under the sod again. From his hiding-
place he watched that worm come floating past him
again and yet again, but he had learned caution.
Now that he looked closely, he saw that the worm
was fastened to the end of a string, and a little
later he discovered that this string was tied to a
stick which was in the possession of some creature
that walked along the bank of the stream. Later
on he learned that this strange animal was a small
boy and that all members of this species were his
enemies. Whether or not he ever relized that he
owed his life to the fact that the boy had lost the
last of his store hooks and was using a bent pin that
day, no one knows.
All that summer the Bully lived in the brook ; but
when the days grew shorter and it began to freeze
he moved with his friends into the river. That
winter, when the river was frozen over except in
shallow places where the current was swift, he had
a narrow escape from a mink. He was talking with
a trout much older and larger than himself about
the comparative merits of worms and flies as food
DAYS IN THE OPEN
when a dark form darted towards them with open
jaws, and, with one snap, his neighbour was cap-
tured and carried away. This foray caused great
excitement in the trout colony, and the Bully
learned for the first time of the existence of rapa-
cious animals frequenting the banks of the river
which made their living by capturing unwary trout.
The following summer he spent in exploring the
river above the point where the brook joined it.
Here there were hills crowding close in on either
side of the river, and rapids were numerous and
strong. Practice in rushing up the swift water
brought his muscles to such a state of development
that every now and then he would spend half an
hour in jumping out of the water as far as he
could. In fact he entered a jumping contest held
under the auspices of the Hemlock Point Trout
Club late in July, and carried off the first prize, an
enormous blue-bottle fly. The judges on this occa-
sion decided that his jump was two and a half times
his own length which would probably make it some
twelve inches. It was during this summer that he
became expert in taking game on the wing. There
is a tradition among the Oswegatchie trout that on
one occasion, with a favourable start, he pulled
down a " devil's darning-needle " that was flying
eighteen inches above the surface of the water and
going at the rate of sixty miles an hour. N. B.
This is merely a tradition and is unsupported by
trustworthy historical evidence.
THE BULLY OF THE OSWEGATCHIE 243
The bullying tendencies waxed strong during
this second summer. One dislikes to set it down,
but it was about this time that he entered upon
those cannibalistic practices in which he persisted
for the rest of his life. One dark and chilly day,
when all the millers and bugs and flies seemed to
have gone into retreat, noon came and found him
with a gnawing pain in his stomach which made
him almost beside himself. Unfortunately when
his hunger was at its height a little trout that was
playing tag with some of its fellows happened to
jostle him. In his anger the Bully snapped at and
swallowed him. For a moment he was conscience-
stricken, and then, when he realized what a de-
licious morsel he had taken to himself, he turned
to and grabbed up fifteen other little members of
his family without stopping to take breath. Hence-
forth he was looked upon as a social outcast by the
best people in troutdom and his only intimacies were
among the tough and lawless members of the com-
munity. Doubtless he brooded over this ostracism,
and grew bitter as he realized the evident contempt
in which he was held. At any rate, he waxed more
and more cantankerous and disagreeable as he grew
bigger and stronger.
A record of all the experiences through which
the Bully passed would fill a volume. Only a few of
the many can be set down in this brief biography,
and those the more important ones. When he was
three years old he was recognized as the boss of the
DAYS IN THE OPEN
river above the brook. For some time stories had
come up stream of the prowess of a big trout living
five miles down the stream in a mill pond. Con-
fident in his ability to whip anything that wore fins,
the Bully started down stream one May morning
bent upon challenging this far-famed warrior to
mortal combat. He had gone about one-half the
distance and had stopped to rest for a little in a
riffle, head up stream, when a strange looking fly
came hopping and dancing across the water. It
was many coloured, but that which attracted him
most strongly was its body, which shone like bur-
nished silver. Without the least hesitation, he
made a grab for it only to feel that same stinging
in the lip which followed upon his experience with
the crooked worm when he was a little fellow.
Fortunately for him he had touched the fly lightly,
and, while he felt a pull for an instant, it was only
in the skin of his lip, and that, for some strange
reason, was torn. He started down stream vowing
that never again would he snap at a fly with a silver
body.
By the second morning he had reached the pond,
and found himself among strangers. It did not
take long for him to become involved in a scrap with
a trout of about his own size from which he quickly
emerged triumphant. Had the pond not furnished
seemingly unlimited supplies of fat chubs he
would have proceeded to give free rein to his
cannibalistic inclinations; but as it was less trouble
THE BULLY OF THE OSWEGATCHIE 245
to catch the chubs than his own blood relations, he
filled himself with the former, and then took a nap
under the shadow of a big stump, the top of which
stood a little way out of the water.
A little before sundown, when he was quite re-
freshed and had begun to think of taking a little
turn about the pond in search of adventure, he
heard the sound of many voices, and, looking out
from his hiding-place, saw a company of trout mov-
ing in his direction. In the lead was his foe of
the morning. There, surrounded by an admiring
crowd, came the biggest trout that Bully had ever
seen. His under jaw projected far beyond its mate
and had an ugly upward curve. He was broad
across the back and thick through and moved with
all the pride of a conquering hero. " Where is he?
Show him to me. I'll make mincemeat of the in-
solent intruder." The booming voice of the big
fellow left the Bully in no doubt as to the identity
of the approaching monster. It was the fighter of
whom he was in search.
The Bully would have been scared if that pos-
sibility had not been denied him. Instead of fleeing
in fear he came out from under cover and shouted :
" Are you talking about me ? You big bluffer !
I'll make you food for the crows." If the truth
must be told, both the combatants used language
that was not only exceedingly scurrilous, but shock-
ingly profane. In this gentle exercise the Bully
had the best of it and the pond trout became so
246 DAYS IN THE OPEN
enraged that he dashed at his enemy with jaws ex-
tended. The Bully was so busy swearing that he
came near losing his life. As it was, he dodged
just in time to prevent those powerful jaws from
closing upon him, but not quickly enough to escape
a slashing from two big teeth which laid his side
open in deep gashes. He was a surprised Bully, but
not dismayed.
The battle that followed had no historian. Of
much that took place, the whirling and darting, the
snapping and struggling, the reports that have come
down through the years are somewhat confused
and even contradictory. It seems clear that at the
first the Bully had the worst of it. Besides the
gashes received in the first attack, he lost one fin
and a piece of his tail early in the fray. The pond
trout had all the advantage in size and was cheered
on by his friends; but the Bully's gymnastic exer-
cises, fighting with the rapids, stood him in good
stead now. His muscles were steel, while those of
the pond trout had grown somewhat flabby since he
had come to content himself with life in the still
water. As they feinted and charged and whirled
about, the pond champion began to grow short of
breath and found increasing difficulty in meeting
the rushes of the Bully, who seemed to grow more
agile as the battle raged. Then there came a
moment when the Bully feinted for his opponent's
tail, and, when the pond trout turned suddenly to
guard his caudal extremity, he left his throat un-
THE BULLY OF THE OSWEGATCHIE 247
guarded for an instant and it was all over. Once
the Bully had set his teeth into the white throat he
shook and raged and tore while the life-blood of his
foe gushed out, and the denizens of the pond saw
their supposedly invincible warrior die before their
eyes.
Nothing is known, certainly, of the Bully's life
after this up to the day that he met his death. It
is whispered that before leaving the pond he under-
took to capture a white miller that came fluttering
over the surface of the water just at dusk one night
and found himself fast at the end of a line as in
his boyhood. Some even assume to say that after
vainly flinging himself into the air in the effort
to shake the miller out of his mouth, he said good-
bye to those who had been drawn about him by his
struggles, and was about ready to give up hope
when one last struggle took him over and under a
root and he found himself free. They even go so
far as to say that for many a day after that the
miller stuck to the Bully's jaw, and that from it
floated a fine, white thread.
Another unsupported rumour has it that as he
was going up stream one day in a narrow part of
the stream he found a fine bunch of branches and
leaves, and gladly pushed in among them when he
heard a disturbance in the water back of him. No
sooner had he entered this refuge than it began to
rise out of the water, and he shortly found himself
on shore and being handled by an animal that re-
248 DAYS IN THE OPEN
sembled the boy who had given him so much trouble
years before, only much larger. Even then he
would not give up without an effort, and, summon-
ing all his strength, he gave a mighty squirm and
escaped out of his captor's hands. He struck on
the gravel, gave two or three tremendous leaps and
was in water again, free.
The Bully had grown to be the biggest trout in
all that stretch of water, and his under jaw pro-
truded as far and was quite as hooked as had been
that of his vanquished enemy of the pond. An
August morning found him well up the river in
the dense woods where the water was cool and food
was abundant. He had found a place where the
water was some four feet deep, and a fallen tree-
top made the finest kind of a hiding-place. Just
above him was a clear space some two feet in
diameter where now and then he could take a bug
or a foolish miller. Lying at his ease, he thought
with satisfaction of his numerous victories over
other trout and of his good fortune in escaping
those strange beings which prowled along the shore
and threw enticing flies or worms into the stream.
Just then but, before we tell of this incident, we
must bring in another story. That morning four
men had broken camp some miles down the stream
and started on a sixteen-mile tramp back into the
woods, where they were to spend a month on the
shore of a lake, fishing and hunting. The duffle
was piled upon a rude sled drawn along the trail
THE BULLY OF THE OSWEGATCHIE 249
by a horse. When two of the party were ready
to start ahead of the others, the guide, Fide Scott,
said to one of them, the Preacher, " We'll follow
the river for more than half the way, and if you
fellows can catch some trout we'll have 'em for
dinner."
The Preacher already had hooks and a line in