"The Great Spirit has spoken, and who are his red children that they
should refuse to listen." Then he covered his face with a corner of his
deer-skin robe and passed swiftly from their midst, this Indian
Agamemnon, who would not reveal his own agony of spirit.
Eleanor Lytte never saw her Indian brother again, but costly presents
each year proved his indelible memory till his death.
THE REMARKABLE ADVENTURES OF SANDBOYS.
A BIG HAUL.
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
There was great excitement at the hotel. The oldest guest--that is to
say, the one who had passed the greatest number of summers at the
Mountain House--had just come in from his morning's fishing, and had
brought with him the largest trout that, so far as any one knew, had
ever been caught in the lake. It was a perfect beauty. Its body was long
and graceful in its lines and curves, and its "speckles" were of such a
lovely hue and quality that a little girl who was looking at them
remarked that she "wouldn't mind gettin' her nose all over freckles if
they was only pretty and pink like that instead of rusty-lookin' little
yeller spots." And everybody in the hotel, even the fishers who had
fished for days and days without catching anything, or getting even any
bites save those of the black-flies, were glad that the luck had come to
the oldest guest, for he was a great favorite with everybody;
grandfathers as well as boys had a great affection for him, he was such
a fine fellow, and so pleasant and courteous to every one. Probably no
one else in the hotel could have caught the "record" trout without
making somebody jealous of him, but in this case it was different, the
oldest guest had such a habit of seeming to share his good-fortune with
all with whom he came in contact. So it happened that there was great
rejoicing over the morning's catch, and everybody said it was a
wonderful one--even Sandboys acknowledged that it was a catch to be
proud of.
"Never been beat as an individual catch," he said. "Never. Biggest trout
I ever see; but not the biggest haul--not quite. No, not by a long shot,
by hookey!"
This remark made in the hearing of Bob and Jack naturally aroused the
curiosity of the two boys. They had been, on the whole, the chiefest of
the admirers of the oldest guest for a long time, and when he came in
just before dinner with his three-and-three-quarter-pounder, Jack ranked
him on the score of achievement with Napoleon Bonaparte, and Bob
admitted that he stood second to none but George Washington. Sandboys's
observation, however, changed this somewhat. If somebody had once made a
bigger haul, even if he had not caught a bigger fish, there might have
to be some slight rearrangement in the order of their lists of heroes.
"What do you mean by that, Sandboys?" they asked.
"Just what I say," replied Sandboys. "As a fish, that's the biggest fish
that's ever been took out of any of these lakes about here; but as a
haul on a single cast, it ain't in it with one I know about."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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