Many of the streams are suitable for fly-casting and experienced fishermen delight in that method of filling their creel.  To cast a gossamer silk line with an alluring fly into the deeper pools and to feel the thrill of a strike as the fly flits over the surface is a joy that far outweighs the less spectacular method of fishing with worm or grub and dragging the trout from the water by main strength.  There is a skill in fly-casting that comes from long practice and the fisherman who is expert in this method cares to use no other.

The trout is a shy fish and the blundering sportsman who goes stumbling through the underbrush, who allows his shadow to fall upon the pool, or who in other ways announces to the fish lurking under the bank that he is present with homicidal intent often wonders why it is that the results are so small for the amount of effort expended.  He may aver that the stream is barren of fish when the fact is that his own clumsiness is responsible for his lack of success.

In other words there are all kinds of fishermen; to the victor belongs the spoils and the greater the skill the greater the spoil.  We are not asserting that Cape Cod trout streams are as prolific as are some in more remote regions, they are fished too frequently for that, but any one wanting a day’s sport will not find them entirely lacking and very often will proudly exhibit catches that will by no means be insignificant, even to the most experienced and enthusiastic fisherman.

* * * * *

“No sah, ah doan’t neber ride on dem things,” said an old coloured lady looking in on the merry-go-round.

“Why, de other day I seen dat Rastus Johnson git on an’ ride as much as a dollah’s worth an’ git off at the very same place he got on at, an’ I sez to him:  ‘Rastus,’ I sez, ‘yo’ spent yo’ money, but whar yo’ been?’”

—­Ladies Home Journal.

OCEAN TRAVELS

EMMA B. PRAY

Not very long ago, in one of the newspapers, I read of a lady who had traveled some thirty thousand odd miles in her life time, and the item set me to thinking of the many times I had traveled with my husband some years ago when he commanded a clipper ship on Eastern voyages.  For Curiosity’s sake I looked over my journals and found that in the few voyages I had made I had covered two hundred forty-nine thousand two hundred sixteen miles—­but how it all came about is a long story.

When I was a young girl, if any one had told me that I should spend a certain number of years travelling about in Eastern countries, passing three or four months at a time on the ocean, I should have said, “What an idea!  Here I am, born and brought up in a small New Hampshire town, in a family whose idea seems to be to keep as far away from the water as possible, and with no thought of ever crossing it, ‘Unless,’ as my father used to say, ’there should be a bridge built by which we could do so’.”