u, you feel as though there was only one girl in the
whole world, and when you start to go home you have to blow your fingers
to keep them warm, and pry your fingers apart, but I don't like to scale
'em and clean 'em, but when they are fried in butter with bread crumbs,
and you have baked potatoes, gosh, say, but you can't sleep all night
from thinking maybe the next party you go to some other boy will ask
her if he can't see her home, but I like bullheads better than sunfish,
don't you, Uncle Ike?" and the boy went on filling his tomato can with
worms.

"I have just one favor to ask," said Uncle Ike, as he puckered up his
mouth in a smile, then laughed so loud that it sounded like raking a
stick along a picket fence, "and that is that you don't mix your fish
up that way. When the subject is girls, stick to girls, and when it is
fish, stay by the fish. I know there is a great deal of similarity in
the way they bite, but when you get them well hooked the result is all
the same, and they have to come into the basket, whether it is a fish or
a girl. The way a girl acts reminds me a good deal of a black bass. You
throw your hook, nicely baited with a fat angleworm, into the water near
the bass, and you think he will make a hop, skip, and jump for it, but
he looks the other way, swims around the worm, and pays no attention to
it, but if he sees another bass pointing toward the worm he sticks up
the top fin on his back, and turns sideways, and looks mad, and seems
to say, 'I'll tend to this worm myself, and you go away,' and the bass
finally goes up and snuffs at the worm, and turns up his nose, and
goes away, as though it was no particular interest to him, but he turns
around and keeps his eye on it, though, and after awhile you think you
will pull the worm out, because the bass isn't very hungry, anyway, and
just as you go to pull it up there is a disturbance in the water, and
the bass that had seemed to close its eyes for a nice quiet nap, makes
a six-foot jump, swallows the hook, worm, and eight inches of the line,
kicks up his heels, and starts for the bottom of the river, and you
think you have caught onto a yearling calf, and the reel sings and burns
your fingers, and the bass jumps out of the water and tries to shake the
hook out of his mouth, and you work hard, and act carefully, for fear
you will lose him, and you try to figure how much he weighs, and whether
you will have him fried or baked, and whether you will inv