a canoe in a lonely lake and went
frogging.

Vicariously. I do not like frogging in person. The creature smiles. Also
he appeals because he is ugly and complacent. But for the grace of God I
might have looked so. He sits in supreme hideousness frozen to the end
of a wet log, with his desirable hind legs spread in view, and smiles
his bronze smile of confidence in his own charm and my friendship. It is
more than I can do to betray that smile. So, hating to destroy the beast
yet liking to eat the leg, about once in my summer vacation in camp I go
frogging, and make the guides do it.

It would not be etiquette to send them out alone, for in our club guides
are supposed to do no fishing or shooting--no sport. Therefore, I sit in
a canoe and pretend to take a frog in a landing-net and miss two or
three and shortly hand over the net to Josef. We have decided on
landing-nets as our tackle. I once shot the animals with a .22 Flobert
rifle, but almost invariably they dropped, like a larger bullet, off the
log and into the mud, and that was the end. We never could retrieve
them. Also at one time we fished them with a many-pronged hook and a bit
of red flannel. But that seemed too bitter a return for the bronze
smile, and I disliked the method, besides being bad at it. We took to
the landing-net.

To see Josef, enraptured with the delicate sport, approach a net
carefully till within an inch of the smile, and then give the old graven
image a smart rap on the legs in question to make him leap headlong into
the snare--to see that and Josef's black Indian eyes glitter with joy at
the chase is amusing. I make him slaughter the game instantly, which
appears supererogatory to Josef who would exactly as soon have a
collection of slimy ones leaping around the canoe. But I have them dead
and done for promptly, and piled under the stern seat. And on we paddle
to the next.

The day to which I had retired from my dinner-party and the tactical
lecture of my distinguished cousin was a late August day of two years
before. The frogging fleet included two canoes, that of young John
Dudley who was doing his vacation with me, and my own. In each canoe, as
is Hoyle for canoeing in Canada, were two guides and a "m'sieur." The
other boat, John's, was somewhere on the opposite shore of Lac des
Passes, the Lake of the Passes, crawling along edges of bays and
specializing in old logs and submerged rocks, after frogs with a
landing-net, the same as us.