a four months' tour and not find a man capable of
putting into words the passionate patriotism that possessed the little
Chicago lawyer. And he was a man with points, for he offered me three
days' shooting in Illinois, if I would step out of my path a little. I
might travel for ten years up and down England ere I found a man who
would give a complete stranger so much as a sandwich, and for twenty ere
I squeezed as much enthusiasm out of a Britisher. He and I talked
politics and trout-flies all one sultry day as we wandered up and down
the shallows of the stream aforesaid. Little fish are sweet. I spent two
hours whipping a ripple for a fish that I knew was there, and in the
pasture-scented dusk caught a three-pounder on a ragged old brown hackle
and landed him after ten minutes' excited argument. He was a beauty. If
ever any man works the Western trout-streams, he would do well to bring
out with him the dingiest flies he possesses. The natives laugh at the
tiny English hooks, but they hold, and duns and drabs and sober greys
seem to tickle the aesthetic tastes of the trout. For salmon (but don't
say that I told you) use the spoon--gold on one side, silver on the
other. It is as killing as is a similar article with fish of another
calibre. The natives seem to use much too coarse tackle.

It was a search for a small boy who should know the river that revealed
to me a new phase of life--slack, slovenly, and shiftless, but very
interesting. There was a family in a packing-case hut on the outskirts
of the town. They had seen the city when it was on the boom and made
pretence of being the metropolis of the Rockies; and when the boom was
over, they did not go. She was affable, but deeply coated with dirt; he
was grim and grimy, and the little children were simply caked with filth
of various descriptions. But they lived in a certain sort of squalid
luxury, six or eight of them in two rooms; and they enjoyed the local
society. It was their eight-year-old son whom I tried to take out with
me, but he had been catching trout all his life and "guessed he didn't
feel like coming," though I proffered him six shillings for what ought
to have been a day's pleasuring. "I'll stay with Maw," he said, and from
that attitude I could not move him. Maw didn't attempt to argue with
him. "If he says he won't come, he won't," she said, as though he were
one of the elemental forces of nature instead of a spankable brat; and
"Paw," lounging by the