in the most difficult department of the art. The expression of my surprise and admiration made him a happy Indian. He knew he had done something which deserved commendation, and it pleased him to find that it was observed. In our every day life we are too sparing of our compliments. When any one within the circle of our acquaintance does well—whether hod-carrier or Senator, crossing-sweeper or orator-it does no harm to let him know that his well-doing is recog nized and appreciated. Judicious commendation is a more potent stimulant than we are apt to think. But for it, many who have come to excel in their several vocations would have grown up into the merest mediocrity, while for lack of it, multitudes have ceased to struggle, because they have received no token that their aspirations were approved. A good word, where deserved, costs nothing, but it is often magical in its effects. My simple "Bravo! no Indian on the Cascapedia could have done better," was more to my guide than are the plaudits of the multitude to the orator on the rostrum. I never afterward lost a fish from want of diligence on the part of my gaffer.

But others did. DUN had hooked a very large fish and had fought him bravely for two hours — bringing him frequently within the reach of his gaffer, and as frequently was obliged to give him

line to prevent him from breaking off in his fright when foully struck at. Finally the gaffer reached him, struck out wildly, scratched the fish and snapped the leader! The silence which followed was a grand exhibition of fortitude and forbearance. It may have been that my friend could find no words suitable to the occasion; but I preferred to attribute the Christian-like grace with which he succumbed to the inevitable, to the possession of that rare virtue commended by the Scripture: "Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." That gaffer gaffed no more for DUN.

A like misfortune happened to General ARTHUR not long afterward, under even more provoking circumstances. He had hooked his fish, played him with consummate skill and brought him several times to the very feet of his gaffer the last time seemingly a dead fish and into water not twelve inches deep. But a spell seemed to be on the poor Indian. He struck once, twice, thrice, without effect except upon the leader, which he broke. But even then the fish did not stir, neither did the gaffer. The fish seemed bewildered, as the gaffer certainly was, until the General quietly intimated that as the fish was waiting to be gaffed it would be well to gratify him; when the Indian seemed to comprehend the situation, and pro

ceeded to do what, if he had attempted two seconds sooner, would have been a success. But before the gaff fell where the fish was he wasn't there, and thirty-five pounds of as fine salmon as ever wagged a tail floated off with the current, in all probability to die "unwept, unhonored and unsung." Expletives, like notes in music, are modulated to meet the intensity of the emotions. The General's expletive was pitched on the upper register, and the gaffer would have been pitched into the Cascapedia if he hadn't looked as if that was just what he expected. The explanation was that the water was not deep enough to permit the gaffhook to go under the fish. The consequence was it glanced along its side and back, struck the leader, which it broke, and gave the fish free rein. And yet this mishap occurred to one of the most skillful and careful gaffers on the river. The poor fellow hung his head for a week, but it was the last fish he lost.

If it requires skill to always gaff a fish, it requires equal skill to always properly respond to a fish which leaps while the angler is playing him. To elevate your rod as the fish leaps, and to hold it at the attained elevation as he goes down, is to almost inevitably lose him. All that is necessary to be done at this supremely exciting moment, is to let the tip of the rod descend with the fish.

You thus prevent the strain and snap which must otherwise ensue. This movement of the rod at the right instant, under such circumstances, is the most difficult lesson to learn in the whole art of angling. No incident in the sport is more exciting than these salmon leaps. If you do not then preserve your wits you will most certainly lose your salmon. The lesson I learned in maple pool (of which anon) in this direction, was a lesson which I had to learn sooner or later; but the recollection of it will be a grief forever.

What the long-roll is to the soldier the reelclick is to the angler. It is the call to battle and stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet.

He

No salmon ever takes the hook when alarmed.

may come to it with a rush, but with his motion so exactly graduated as to have but little momentum after the lure is reached - like a jumper making for the goal. The result is that on the very instant of striking the reel seldom gives out more than a click or two, unless the angler strikes simultaneously-which most anglers do; whether wisely or not, is a problem yet unsolved by the masters of the art. The moment, however, the fish feels the sting of the hook he shoots off with a rush, causing, by his rapid movement, that whiz and whir-r which, to the angler, is the most thrilling music that ever falls upon his ear. The delib

career.

erate click, click, which succeeds the strike, is the measured prelude to the grand chorus which follows when the astonished fish enters upon his mad These sounds alternate through the protracted struggle; now a single click, as the fish shakes his head in his sulking moments, and now a whiz and whir-r-r, as he rushes and leaps in his desperate efforts to free himself from the stinging barb which holds him. When a determined fish is thus hooked, the same stirring music is repeated a hundred times, until, finally, the poor fellow is only able to give spasmodic tugs, moving the line but the length of a single cog, the reel responding by slow and measured clicks like the tap of a muffled drum beating

"Funeral marches to the grave."

But these death-tugs are full of peril. More fish "tear out" then than at any other moment of the struggle. To prevent such a catastrophe requires the most watchful and delicate manipulation. Safety lies in a cautious easing off of the pressure on the line with every movement of the fish, being careful, however, that no slack is allowed to render his vicious wrench effective and fatal. To see an angler at the moment when a mammoth salmon thus escapes-his rod at the perpendicular, his line dangling loosely in the breeze, his mouth wide open, and his muscles limp as a sea