my

more than a score of years - long before locks were frosted or my vision dimmed; recollections of shady nooks, where rays of sunlight came down through the rustling leaves like lines of silver; of huge masses of gray rock, imbedded in thick moss, softer and more inviting than the luxurious divans of the drawing-room; of the "expressive silence" of the old woods, when, after the ascent of some rugged hill, we sat down to rest, indifferent, amid such surroundings, to the admonitions of prudence or the march of time. Enveloped in a golden sunset, with the forest birds making the woods vocal with their sweet melody, and with my own heart in unison with all these harmonies of nature, I have often found myself, with no other feelings than those of devout reverence and gratitude, repeating the words of the Psalmist: "How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wing."

It is, as I have said, in the spring time that I make these diversions from the beaten path, and I have more than once thus discovered unfished waters, where, since "the morning stars sang together," no line had been cast or trout captured. They remain as sunny places upon the map of my memory, and are often revisited, although now upon the borders of some of them may be seen the hunter's camp and the fisherman's shanty.

And talking of memory, what a wonderful faculty it is! How drolly things long forgotten sometimes come back to us, without effort and without thought, like a vision, as if the events of ten or twenty years agone had occurred but yesterday! The books are full of curious instances. I have a few not in the books, but apropos to my theme, and which, while I am moving slowly on my way to the Raquette, may afford some one a moment's amusement.

One morning, twenty years ago, while encamped on the Fourth lake of the Fulton range, I was sitting on a freshly fallen spruce tree adjusting my reel for work, when the ever-welcome and long waited for call to breakfast was sounded. I hurriedly laid aside the reel and responded to the call. On sitting down to the table I found a disagreeable quantity of the exudations of the spruce tree adhering to my fingers. It troubled me to remove it, and what with that and the pleasures of the table, I was totally unable, afterward, to remember where I had left my reel, and was obliged to provide another for my day's fishing. Two years afterward I chanced to camp on the same spot, and while idly moving about I discovered a hacked spruce tree from which had exuded large globules of gum, clear as crystal. In breaking it off, some particles unpleasantly adhered to my fingers, when,

like a flash, all the incidents of the old time came to my mind, and without a moment's hesitation I walked to the old spruce tree where I had then been adjusting my reel, and picked it up on the very spot where it had fallen two years before.

Here is another instance: More than fifty years ago, when a very little fellow, in company with others, I was lost in the woods. After After many miles of weary wandering we came out upon a clearing, half famished. But the only food we could procure with which to appease our hunger was boiled potatoes and salt pickles. They must have been delicious, for to this day I never see a potato and pickle in juxtaposition without being carried back these fifty years, and see directly before me the earth-covered potato-heap from which the "boiling" was taken, the begrimmed pork barrel out of whose ponderous depths the pickles were abstracted, and the huge "crane" which swung across the huger chimney within whose ample "jams" the potato-pot was boiled. I have had a penchant for potatoes and pickles ever since.

Still another: One who, before disease had laid its heavy hand upon him, was wont to accompany me upon all my angling excursions, had the misfortune to become the possessor of a counterfeit five-dollar bill. As, poor fellow, his heart was always fuller of kind thoughts and generous pur

poses than his pocket-book of bank bills, he very naturally racked his brain to remember from whom he had obtained the rascally counterfeit. Months afterward it was still in his wallet, and he was in the habit of showing it to his friends to test their skill as judges of genuine currency. On one occasion, more than a year after he became the possessor of the bill, an expert pointed out to him a tiny spot upon it, which, to the expert, furnished incontestible proof of its character. In bringing the bill close to his eyes to discover the defect to which his friend had directed his attention, he held it near his nostrils and instantly detected the odor of fresh beef. After a second sniff, he stepped back with an air and attitude as tragic and as artistic as ever Forrest assumed in his role of Metamora, and exclaimed:

"I now do know the sanguinary wretch

Who thus hath tricked me of my honest gains;

And by the rood [he meant rod] which gentle Izaak plied, I'll make the fiend disgor-r-r-ge.

This bill came to me from my butcher!"

And such was the fact. The delinquent remembered having missed a counterfeit five which he had kept hidden, as he supposed, but which, by some accident, had found its way into the till which contained genuine money. My friend has thought well of his nose ever since.

But who has not passed through a like experience, where the odor of a flower, the swing of the arm, a single note of long forgotten music, the curve of a fence, a flash of lightning, the whistle of the winter's wind, a smile, a sigh, a laugh, a word, a tone has brought back scenes, friends, incidents and situations which, but for these fleeting reminders, would have remained buried in the memory until the coming of that more mysterious transition when "all we ever did or said or felt shall, like a marshaled host, pass in full review before the immortal mind."

And now having, during this little bit of irrelevancy, passed over the five miles which intervene between Martin's and the river entrance to Cold and Ray brooks, where I went the last two Augusts, I wish only to say that, in the proper season, they will afford, with moderate skill and patience, such sport as is rarely vouchsafed to any angler anywhere. At least, such was my experience two years ago, when during a short afternoon I landed from a deep pool in Cold brook fifty splendid trout, and fished three hours for one. It was on this wise: For an hour or more before sunset, a trout which I estimated to weigh more than three pounds kept the water in constant agitation and myself in a fever of excitement. I cast for him a hundred times at least. With almost every cast he