stay all night
with us, and gave him a napkin with a red border to sleep on under
a tree, cause there was not blankets enough to go around, and in the
morning I let him have one of the soda crackers I had in my shirt bosom
and he wanted to go fishing with us. He said he would show us how to
fish. So he got a piece of pork rind at a farm house for bait, and put
it on a hook, and we got in an old boat, and my chum rowed and Pa and I
trolled. In swinging the boat around Pa's line got under the boat, and
come right up near me. I don't know what possessed me, but I took hold
of Pa's line and gave it a "yank," and Pa jumped so quick his hat went
off in the lake."

[Illustration: Stoper, says Pa, I've got a whale p034]

"Stoper," says Pa, "I've got a whale." It's mean in a man to call his
chubby faced little boy a whale, but the whale yanked again and Pa began
to pull him in. I hung on, and let the line out a little at a time, just
zackly like a fish, and he pulled, and sweat, and the bald spot on his
head was getting sun burnt, and the line cut my hand, so I wound it
around the oar-lock, and Pa pulled hard enough to tip the boat over. He
thought he had a forty pound musculunger, and he stood up in the boat
and pulled on that oar-lock as hard as he could. I ought not to have
done it, but I loosened the line from the oar-lock, and when it slacked
up Pa went right out over the side of the boat, and struck on his pants,
and split a hole in the water as big as a wash tub. His head went down
under water, and his boot heels hung over in the boat. "What you doin'?
Diving after the fish?" says I as Pa's head came up and he blowed
out the water. I thought Pa belonged to the church, but he said "you
damidyut."

"I guess he was talking to the fish. Wall, sir, my chum took hold of Pa's
foot and the collar of his coat and held him in the stern of the boat,
and I paddled the boat to the shore, and Pa crawled out and shook
himself. I never had no ijee a man'-pants could hold so much water. It
was just like when they pull the thing on a street sprinkler. Then Pa
took off his pants and my chum and me took hold of the legs and Pa
took hold of the summer kitchen, and we rung the water out. Pa want so
sociable after that, and he went back in the woods with his knife;
with nothing on but a linen duster and a neck-tie, while his pants were
drying on a tree, to cut a switch, and we hollered to him that a party
of picnicers from Lake Side were com