I didn’t need any instructions, and as the fish ran for a rock some distance off, I brought him up sharply, and he jumped again as wickedly as he could full three feet out of the water, and came straight toward us with a rush.  It was no use trying, I couldn’t reel up quick enough, and he was under the eddy at our feet before I had one-third of the line in.  Fortunately, he was securely hooked, and there was no drop out from the slacking of the line.  He was in about twelve feet of water, and as I brought the line taut on him again he went off down stream as fast as ever.  I had the current full against him this time, and I brought him steadily up through it, and held him well in hand.  I swept him around in front of Mr. McGrath’s landing-net, but he shied off so quickly that I thought he would break the line.  Away down he went as stiffly and stubbornly as possible, and there he lodged, rubbing his nose against a rock and trying to get rid of the hook.  Half a dozen times I dislodged him and brought him up, but he was so wild and strong I did not dare to force him in.  At last he made a dash for the ripple, and I gave him a quick turn, and as he struck out of it Mr. McGrath had his landing-net under him in a twinkling, and he was out kicking on the rock.  He weighed four pounds six ounces, and furnished conclusive evidence that a bass of that weight can give a great deal of very agreeable trouble before he will consent to leave his element.

“What was it,” said I, “that you called him when you struck him just now?”

“What did I call him, sorr?  A mikroptheros, sorr.”

“And for Goodness’ sake, McGrath, what is a mikroptheros?”

“Begorra! that’s what it is,” said Mr. McGrath, throwing the bass overboard to swim at the end of its leathern thong.

“Well!” said I in amazement.  “I never heard such a name as that for a fish in all my life!—­a mikroptheros!”

“Divil a more or less!” said Mr. McGrath decidedly.  “The Fish Commissioner wor up here last week, an’ sez he to me, sez he, ’It’s a mikroptheros, so it is.’—­’What’s that?’ sez I.—­’That!’ sez he; and he slaps him into an illigant glass bottle of sperrits, as I thought he was goin’ to say to me, ‘McGrath, have ye a mouth on ye?’ an’ I as dhry as if I’d et red herrin’s for a week.  ‘Yis,’ sez he to me, ‘that’s the right name of him;’ and wid that he writes it on a tag, and he sends it off, this side up wid care, to the musayum.  Sure I copied it:  be me sowl, an’ if ye doubt me word, here it is.”

Mr. McGrath handed me a piece of paper torn off the margin of a newspaper, on which he had written legibly enough, “Micropteros Floridanus” I read it as gravely as I could, smiled feebly at my own ignorance, and returned it to him, saying, “Upon my word, McGrath, you are perfectly right.  What a blessing it is to have had a classical education!”

“Sorra lie in it,” said he proudly as he replaced the slip in the crown of his hat; “an’ it’s meself that’s glad of it.”