relating his adventures, which,
however improbable or even impossible as matter of fact they might be,
commanded, for the moment, absolute credence.

"They've a curious fish in the St. Lawrence," said the doctor, as he
knocked the ashes from his meerschaum, and refilled it, "known among
the fishermen of that river as the LAWYER. I have never seen it among
any other of the waters of this country, and never there but once. It
never bites at a hook, and is taken only by gill-nets, or the seine.
Everybody," he continued, "has visited the Thousand Islands, or if
everybody has not, he had better go there at once. He will find them,
in the heat of summer, not only the coolest and most healthful
retreat, and the pleasantest scenery that the eye ever rested upon,
always excepting these beautiful lakes, but the best river fishing I
know of on this continent. He will not, to be sure, take the speckled
trout that we find in this region, but he will be among the black
bass, the pickerel, muscalunge, and striped bass, in the greatest
abundance, and ready to answer promptly any reasonable demand which he
may make upon them. Think of reeling in a twenty-pound pickerel, or a
forty-pound muscalunge, on a line three hundred feet in length,
playing him for half an hour, and landing him safely in your boat at
last! There's excitement for you worth talking about.

"I stopped over night at Cape Vincent, last summer, on my way to 'the
Thousand Islands,' on a fishing excursion of a week. I was acquainted
with an old fisherman of that place, and agreed to go out with him the
next morning, to see what luck he had with the fish. I don't think
much of that kind of fishing, though it is well enough for those who
make a business of it, for the gill-net works, as the old man said,
while the fisherman sleeps, and all he gets in that way is clear gain.

"Well, I rose early the next morning to go out with the old fisherman
to his gill-nets. It would have done you good, as it did me, to see
how merry every living thing was. The birds, how jolly they were, and
how refreshing the breeze was that came stealing over the water,
making one feel as if he would like to shout and hurrah in the
buoyancy, the brightness, and glory of the morning. But I am not going
to be poetical about the sunrise, and the singing birds. We went out
upon the river just as the sun came up with his great, round, red
face, for there was a light smoky haze floating above the eastern