The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-17
WHY HE SOBBED.

This Lad Caught the Trout and Lost It
 and Then An! How He Found Itl | T remember having had two good, | genuine, sobbing, breast heaving, all
 most heart bursting cries in my life
 said an old time newspaper man. Just | two The first was when l caught the big brook trout had been after nearly all one spring and lost it. The second | was when I found it again. I think
 cried harder when found it than when 1 lost 1t.
 | When I was 10 the folks who had l the marking out of my destiny resolved 1 that the future would be of small use | to me unless I was bound out to learn | the printers trade and bound out was The printing office of which I thus became an appurtenance was in q. way back county seat town, where there were trout streams: and pheas-
 ants as we called the ruffed grouse in those days; and rabbits, and in the spring and fall. pigeons so many that boy who couldn't fetch in back load off the buckwheat stubble or out of the beechwoods any day during a flight
 wasn't considered of much account,
 And if there was one thing I liked
 better than another it was trout fish
 ing There was fun of course, setting
 your rabbit snares of an evening, and
 sneaking up early in the frosty Noven-
 Der mornings, to see what the tWitoh-
 up on the box-trap had caught, and
 there was fun going out with the old
 shotgun to catch a peasant on log, or
 to bark him up tree by initiating
 dog or fox, and then popping him
 over; or in hiding on the edge of the old buckwheat field and waiting for the flock of wild pigeons, sitting on the
 dead limb of the old pine or hemlock tree, to drop down and huddle together at their feeding in the stubble, and then raking them fore and aft with the big charge of birdshot, rammed hard, so 1t would scatter. But to go out with the chestnut pole and the horse hair line, and the tin mustard box of fish worms, and seek the brook where the trout lurked-that was the best of all.
 "As printers apprentice I had the care of the editorial baby, of which there was always one in the house the | also made the editorial garden in the spring, weeded it and hoed it during the summer, and dug the potatoes, cut the cabbage and pulled the beets and tur- nips in the fall, besides incidentally see ing that the hired girl had plenty of water on wash days, which said water I lifted from a well eighty feet deep with the help of an old oaken bucket and a windlass.
 "rhe editor also had a small farm a couple of miles from town where dropped corn and covered it in the planting season, helped put in the po- tatoes, and during harvest carried the jug for the harvest hands. I likewise the apples in the fall and helped through the buckwheat Even ings by the light of two tallow can dies I distributed pi and washed off | and put away the wood type they had | been using during the day at he office | printing vendue bills.
 "These daily and evening pastimes of | mine the editor and his family held were recreation quite sufficient for me. ] having due regard and solicitude for my health, and so if I ever got into the NOOGS or on the fhppll DdTIeHs UT along he trout brook I had simply to defy Ill consequences and get there against orders.
 "No matter how fine a string Of trout brought in, or whatever of bag of pheasant, pigeons or rabbits l turned ID at home with, I invariably got my ! acket well warmed by the no means fight editorial hand, or by the hand of Mrs. Editor, which was quite as ener-