The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1882-02-21

before he started, and soon, in he
went, up to his neck. To tumble
down in stream, like the Diamond,
besides being inconvenient, is con-
fusing; the water carries you of
J your feet, and bumps you against the
} rocks; its roar deafens you, and you
} think you are going to drown your
fishing basket goes one way and
tackle another, and you regain your
feet with general sense of damp, to
hear your friends laughing at you.
; In this days fishing, we caught
about seventy.five pounds of trou
among four Of us. At night we re
turned, quite well tired, to the farm
house, which was our temporary
abode. We had fried pork for sup
per. l believe stated that they had
pork in this country. We then went
to bed, or rather to mosquitoes. There
were four of us, with two beds in a
room, which, SO far from David Cop
per6eld's being able to swing cat in
it, he couldn't have performed that
feat with kitten.
Having prepared ourselves for re-
pose, out went the candle, and in came
the mosquitoes. N-had brought with
him decoction prepared by some
medical friend, which was to keep of
these invidious insects. 1t smelt
strongly of spearmint, and unclean
oil. 1t Invoked, however, like a mira
Gle, for the mosquitoes would light on
our faces, and their feet would stick
fast in the stuf-it had an extract of
tar in it for that purpose-and by the
time small troop were thus entrapped,
then you had music. Anon you
would hear H give rousing clap,
and with an expletive state: There!
l missed him p So we rolled and tossed,
till finally N burst out laughing,
wanting to know if l was awake.
Sleep being impossible, We lit our
pipes and sat up in bed to take a
smoke. Jokes were cracked, stories
were told, and we made night, up in
that room, comparatively hideous.
Next morning We learned that there
was sick baby down stairs, and the
supposition in the family was, that
our noise hadn't helped its collie any
That house will not soon fade from
our memory. We slept in an attic,
where the roof slanted down over the
heads of the beds, so that it was not
ten inches above the pillow; the roof
was innocent of lath, plaster, or any
of those little amenities that tend to
make existence endurable. ~
Rustic ingenuity upon the rafters
overhead, had pinned, in the charac-
ter of wallpaper "certain emanations
of the press" among which were the
Christian Herald, Boston Post, and
New Hampshire Patriot. The strong
point of this contrivance was, that all
manner of bugs, spiders. and other
creeping things, seemed to assemble in
convention in the silent watches of the |
night, and essayed the climbing of
these papers, which being rather
much inclined, rendered the task of the
insects difficult; but perseverance
seemed to be a predominant trait, for |
all night long we heard these reptiles |
scratching, scraping and rustling up
and down the paper, at the agreeable
distance of about q foot from our
heads. Occasionally a spider more
adventurous than the rest
would drop down by his web and
alight on our faces, but he generally
beat a precipitate retreat.
Then, too, there was q death-watch
near the headboard, and he kept up
his dismal ticking as long as we were
conscious. This death-watch is an
abominable nuisance. Its regular,
monotonous, unceasing beat. heard in
fearful proximity about II o'clock at
night, when everybody else is asleep,
is enough to drive nervous man
crazy. | would rather have six
Founders fired off at me all night.
However, morning at last came,
and we consulted as to what course
should be taken, whether to turn
and fish our way back, or
strike further north. We finally con.
cluded to adopt the latter course.
We procured a guide, got a wagon,
left most of our luggage, took change
of raiment, all the gin, and then
started. We rode about six miles to
q house, which was the last one upon
the extremities of civilization. From
this place We were to walk over a
''carry," stated to be about mile and
q half long. but was nearly six. So
We packed our traps on our backs.
Our guide carried all our camp equip 1
age. N had a fishing basket with Z,
The gin in it /; the carpet-bag with our 1