ond to pond,
taking toll of all and thus learning their characteristics so
definitely, though this seems hardly probable. Probably my
pickerel fishermen of yesterday are artisans today, bookkeepers
perhaps or salesmen, so differently dressed and occupied, their
talk of such different things that I would not know them, for of
all animals man alone is able to put on or take off an individuality
at will, changing his countenance with his garment and his
mind with his occupation. The Natty Bumpo of today may be the
natty dry goods clerk of tomorrow, assuming the Bumpo with his
fishing togs and making his talk of many ponds fit the clothes.

The fishermen add a touch of picturesque geniality, of excitement
even to the pond, being as occasional in its daily life as the
crossing of a deer or an otter or the circling of an osprey in
summer. Any one of these causes a momentary stir, a local
disturbance down in the depths among the regular occupants of the
place, but after all it is but a momentary and local one, and the
great business of the place goes on just the same near by the
spots where the hand of the grim reaper is busy removing prominent
citizens. For in my pond the pickerel are surely the prominent
citizens, the aristocracy, for they are the largest and strongest
and they live directly off their fellow fishes, which constitutes
an aristocracy in any community. Minnows, perch, bream and mullet
alike are busy assimilating vegetable matter, mussels, worms,
insects and small crustacae, merely to form themselves either
directly or in their children ultimately into titbits for the
nourishing of pickerel. All the pond world knows that and its
denizens tremble in the presence of these great-jawed, hook-toothed
gobblers of small fry; and that constitutes a proletariat
the world over.

[Illustration: Pickerel from an Old Colony Pond]

In fishing time the loneliness of the empty levels of the ice is
broken at dawn by the coming of the crows, especially if there
have been fishermen the day before. Remnants of the fishermen's
noon meal are quite likely to be scattered about the spot where
they had their fire, and always the minnows which they took from
the hooks at leaving are there, frozen upon the frozen surface. It
seems a cold breakfast to us fire-worshipping mortals, but the
crows take it eagerly. Often, too, before it is fairly swallowed
fishermen appear, whereupon the crows flap silently but swiftly
away. One knows by