Do
you remember the account that somebody gives in a ragged but terse
kind of verse, of the 'gentleman in black,' who, as he walked about,
'Backward and forward he switched his long rail,
As a gentleman switches his cane?'
And of whose dress it was facetiously said:
'His coat was red and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind for his tail to stick through.'
another author said of him on one of his fishing excursions,
that
'His rod, it was a sturdy mountain oak,
His line, a cable which no storm e'er broke,
His hook he baited with a dragon's tail,
And sat upon a rock and bob'd for whale!'
Well, like the ebony gentleman, you can, if you choose, sit upon
Lonesome Rock enjoying your meditations, and bobbing, not for whale,
for whatever other fish may be found in the Lower Saranac, I believe
there are no whale; but you can bob for trout; whether you will catch
any or not will depend very much on circumstances. It is a capital
place to cast the fly from, or to sink your hook with a bait, and if
the trout do not choose to bite, whose fault is that, I should like
to know?
"And this reminds me of an anecdote told me by a gentleman I met in
June of last year, on the Rackett River among the black flies, of an
adventure he met with on Lonesome Rock last season.
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