and nobody is hurt. The only point of
this narrative is its peculiar truth. It not only tells what happened
to us--the five people concerned in it--but what has happened and is
happening to all the other fishing parties that at the season of the
year, from Halifax to Idaho, go gliding out on the unruffled surface
of our Canadian and American lakes in the still cool of early summer
morning.

We decided to go in the early morning because there is a popular belief
that the early morning is the right time for bass fishing. The bass is
said to bite in the early morning. Perhaps it does. In fact the thing
is almost capable of scientific proof. The bass does _not_ bite between
eight and twelve. It does _not_ bite between twelve and six in the
afternoon. Nor does it bite between six o'clock and midnight. All these
things are known facts. The inference is that the bass bites furiously
at about daybreak.

At any rate our party were unanimous about starting early. "Better
make an early start," said the Colonel, when the idea of the party was
suggested. "Oh, yes," said George Popley, the bank manager, "we want to
get right out on the shoal while the fish are biting."

When he said this all our eyes glistened. Everybody's do. There's a
thrill in the words. To "get right out on the shoal at daybreak when the
fish are biting," is an idea that goes to any man's brain.

If you listen to the men talking in a Pullman car, or an hotel corridor,
or, better still, at the little tables in a first-class bar, you will
not listen long before you hear one say: "Well, we got out early, just
after sunrise, right on the shoal." And presently, even if you can't
hear him, you will see him reach out his two hands and hold them about
two feet apart for the other man to admire. He is measuring the fish.
No, not the fish they caught; this was the big one that they lost. But
they had him right up to the top of the water. Oh, yes, he was up to
the top of the water all right. The number of huge fish that have been
heaved up to the top of the water in our lakes is almost incredible. Or
at least it used to be when we still had bar rooms and little tables
for serving that vile stuff Scotch whisky and such foul things as gin
Rickeys and John Collinses. It makes one sick to think of it, doesn't
it? But there was good fishing in the bars, all the winter.

But, as I say, we decided to go early in the morning. Charlie Jones,
the railroad man, said that he reme