"What a question for Mr. John Effingham to ask on his native water! So much for travelling in far countries, where a man forgets quite as much as he learns, I fear." Here the commodore turned entirely round, and raising an open hand in an oratorical manner, he added,--"You must know, ladies and gentlemen, that the lake is in blow." "In blow, commodore! I did not know that the lake bore its blossoms." "It does, sir, nevertheless. Ay, Mr. John, and its fruits, too; but the last must be dug for, like potatoes. There have been no miraculous draughts of the fishes, of late years, in the Otsego, ladies and gentlemen; but it needs the scientific touch, and the knowledge of baits, to get a fin of any of your true game above the water, now-a-days. Well, I have had the head of the sogdollager thrice in the open air, in my time; though I am told the admiral actually got hold of him once with his hand." "The sogdollager," said Eve, much amused with the singularities of the man, whom she perfectly remembered to have been commander of the lake, even in her own infancy; "we must be indebted to you for an explanation of that term, as well as for the meaning of your allusion to the head and the open air." "A sogdollager, young lady, is the perfection of a thing. I know Mr. Grant used to say there was no such word in the dictionary; but then there are many words that ought to be in the dictionaries that have been forgotten by the printers. In the way of salmon trout, the sogdollager is their commodore. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I should not like to tell you all I know about the patriarch of this lake, for you would scarcely believe me; but if he would not weigh a hundred when cleaned, there is not an ox in the county that will weigh a pound when slaughtered." "You say you had his head above water?" said John Effingham. "Thrice, Mr. John. The first time was thirty years ago; and I confess I lost him, on that occasion, by want of science; for the art is not learned in a day, and I had then followed the business but ten years. The second time was five years later: and I had then been fishing expressly for the old gentleman, about a month. For near a minute, it was a matter of dispute between us, whether he should come out of the lake or I go into it; but I actually got his gills in plain sight. That was a glorious haul! Washington did not feel better the night Cornwallis surrendered, than I felt on that great occasion!" "One never knows the feelings of another, it seems. I should have thought disappointment at the loss would have been the prevailing sentiment on that great occasion, as you so justly term it."