“What a fall was there, my countrymen!” The D. D., the LL. D., the eloquent preacher, the famous lecturer, the renowned defender of the “faith once delivered to the saints,” the man whose name is a household word among those affiliated with one of our largest Protestant bodies catalogued as a “miserable old cuss!” Here we are, at the pier. Confess now, that for unadulterated pleasure a sail such as we’ve just had beats motoring, whether on land or water, out of sight. Independent of the wind in a motor boat? Yes, but not of the sputtering and chugging and smell. Remember what Tennyson says in Locksley Hall? I don’t know that I can quote it accurately, but the idea is that a day in a cat-boat is better than a thousand years in a naphtha launch. [Illustration: 0095] [Illustration: 0096] ```'T is night upon the lake, ```Our bed of boughs is built where-- `````high above------------- ```The pine tree soughs. ```'Tis still,--and yet what woody `````noises loom ```Against the background of the silent `````gloom; ```One well might hear the opening of `````a dower, ```If day were hashed as this. `````--Richard Watson Gilder, `````_The Voice of the Pine._ [Illustration: 0097] VII. AMONG THE NORTHERN PINES [Illustration: 9097] E reached the lake in the evening-, and started out bright and early the next morning to call upon some of the old inhabitants who wear fins and have a reputation for being scaly. A new and fascinating Dowagiac minnow caught the eye of a big bass before we had gone forty rods, and connections were promptly established. As he was being kindly but firmly persuaded to approach the boat he flung himself into the air, gave a twist and a wiggle and a shake and thus succeeded in appropriating that Dowagiac to his own uses. He has not been heard from since that brief interview, but it is safe to say that he is putting on airs as he dangles that rainbow-coloured minnow before the eyes of his admiring relatives. We have sometimes doubted the truth of the old saw that it is unlucky to lose the first fish hooked, but all doubt on that point has been put to flight.