Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-25

him. That hour sat among Princes and
crowned heads, greater than them all. Be-
low the bank we heard California scufhlng
with his salmon and swearing Spanish oaths:
Portland and assisted at the capture, and
the fish dragged the spring balance out by
the roots. 1t was only constructed to weigh
up to 10 pounds We stretched the three
fish on the grass-the 1111, the IL and 10
pounder-and we gave an oath that all who
came after should merely be weighed and
put back again.
The Record of the Day.
How shall tell the glories of that day SO
that you may be interested? Again and
again did California and prance down that
reach to the little bay, each with salmon
IN tow, and land him in the shadows. Then
Portland took my rod and caught some 10
FOUNDERS, and my spoon was carried away
by an unknown leviathan. Each fish, for
the merits of the three that had died so
gamelv, was hastily hooked on the balance
and flung back. Portland recorded the
weight in pocketbook, for he was real
estate mau. Each fish fought for all he was
worth, and none more savagely than the
smallest, game little six FOUNDER. At the
end OF six hours we added up the list Read
it. Total:-Sixteen fish; aggregate weight,
al pounds. The score in detail runs some
thing like this-it Is only interesting to
those concerned:-15, u, 111S, 10, 92, s
and so forth; as haye said, nothing under
six pounds and three ten Founders.
Very solemnly and thankfully we put
up our rods-it was glory enough for all
time-and returned weeping in each others
arms, weeping tears of pure Joy, to that
simple bare-legged family in the packing
case house by the water SIDE. The old
farmer recollected days and nights of fierce
warfare with the Indians way back in the
fifties," when every ripple of the Columbia
river and its tributaries hid covert danger.
God had endowered him with queer.
crooked gift of expression and fierce anx-
lety for the welfare OF his two little sons
tanned and reserved children, who attended
school daily and spoke good English in
strange tongue.
a Picture of Home Life.
His wife was an austere woman, who had
once been kindly and perhaps handsome.
Very many years of toll had taken the elias
ticity out OF step and voice. She looked
tor nothing better than everlasting work
the chafEg detail of housework-and then
grave somewhere up the hill among the
blackberries and the pines. But in her
grim way she sympathized with her eldest
daughter, small and silent maiden of 18,
she tended and the pans she secured.
We stumbled into the household at
crisis and there was deal of downright
humanity in that same. A bad, wicked
dressmaker had promised the maiden a
dress in time for to-morrow's railway
journey, and though the barefooted Georgy,
who stood in very wholesome awe of his
sister, had secured the woods on a pony in
search, that dress never arrived. So, with
sorrow in her heart and hundred Sister
Anne glances up the road, she waited upon
the strangers and, doubt not, cursed them
for the wants that stood between her and her
need for tears. 1t was genuine little
tragedy. The mother, in heavy, passion
less voice, rebuked her impatience, yet sat
up far into the night bowed over heap Of
sewing for the daughters benefit.
These things beheld in the long marigold
scented twilight and whispering night,
loafng round the little house with Cali
fornia, who unfolded himself like lotus to
the moon, or in the little boarded bunk that
was our bedroom, swapping tales with
Portland and the old man. Most of the
yarns began in this way: "Red Larry was
bull puncher back of Lone county, Mon
tana," or "There was man riding the trail
met jack rabbit sitting in a cactus" or
"'Bout the time of the San Diego land
boom woman from Monterey. etc." You
can try to piece out for yourselves what sort
of stories they were.
RUDYARD KIPLINo.