"What a pity that this fair spot is where it is, among a set of peasants who are blind to its true value." "Indeed it is," said the Vice. "There never was a finer bit of ground for a beer garden, and such a place would call for a brewery; this, in turn, would bring out an opposition establishment, and malt and hops would look up, while coopers would find steady employment." "Mercy!" murmured the Cook imploringly, "mercy!" "Or," continued the Vice, "it would make a beautiful park; not large to be sure, but there is enough forestland to clear, and enough bare land to plant with forest trees, to occupy a great many voters along about election time. Then the grades are such that the roads could be constructed only by an immense amount of work, and as there's no stone near by, the contract for road-filling would amount to a handsome thing. Properly managed, such a park would hold a party together for twenty years, unless some set of old fogies happened to impose a landscape gardener and architect upon the commissioners." The Cook made haste to quit the creek and return to camp, and that same evening he experienced a severe bilious attack. As the Purser was already ill from a surfeit of rice and maple syrup at dinner, and the Vice was rapidly succumbing to the same viands, the Commodore charged himself with preparing a supper which should have for its principal feature an entirely new dish--to wit, fried frogs' legs. He had devised a beautiful method of taking the musical batrachians. He baited a very fine fish-hook with a bit of red flannel and affixed it to an eighty-foot trout-line. Then joining a fourteen foot rod he walked along the shady shore, and cast his line. Should the fisher for trout sneer at such outlandish fishing, and pot-fishing at that, he should know that to catch a bull-frog with hook and line requires a better eye and more skillful hand than are sufficient to successful trout-fishing. The frog never "rises" to the bait; the latter must be let gently down before his eyes and nose, and then, as he leisurely opens his jaws, be dropped into his mouth. The slightest breath of wind, or tremor of arm, causes the bait to graze the cheek of the game, and then an angry foot is lifted to brush it away, and a goggle eye rolls back reproachfully at the disturber. When the bait is taken, the frog seems to realize but slowly that anything unusual has occurred, and the sportsman is likely to accuse him of lacking the proper spirit of a game fish (or beast, or bird, whichever he may please to call it), but when the truth dawns upon the frog's mind he gives a leap, to view which would drive a kangaroo into mortification and suicide, and then goes for deep water with an alacrity which causes the reel to buzz merrily. Having tested the length of the line, however, his method changes to that of a goat, and he pulls stubbornly in a single direction while the sportsman reels him in. The Commodore illustrated this operation but once however, for