The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-09-16
MIR. wHITNEY's MusKALLoNGE

M Ih' " III 4NEI . MCShAlLOINIE M
 George l.. Wood. assistant superinten- dent in the division of salaries and al- lowances of the post office department, will leave tomorrow for the summer home of Postmaster General Payne on Beaver Lake, Wis, to examine a num- Der of afffdavits and other documentary
 evidence and make a thorough investi-
 gation as to the truth of certain infor-
 nation contained in a recent letter re- ceived at the department from Francis H. Whitney, Mir. Payne's private secre- tary. If MT. Wood succeeds in substan- tiating MT. Whitney's story he will re- ] main at Beaver Lake for week or so in an endeavor to duplicate the private l secretary's experience. The letter which is evidence that MT Whitney, when not dictating official correspond ence and confined to official forms of ex-
 precision, is a slang slinger of note and a worthy successor to the lamented Billy Baxter" is as follows:
 While the facts remain clear in my mind and can discuss the matter intel ligently, I want to relate an experience ttldL Dtleil iilC W ullt at l4dhE MillUCuuci The piscatorial epic that you are about to hear, and the truth of which is fully substantiated by affidavits and other documentary evidence, is certainly the | limit and would have made even Izaak | Walton take to the tall timbers.
 1T went out on the lake in the morn
 ing. with Hon. John W. Sutton as guide,
 and did not get even nibble. Then we
 went to dinner country fashion, about l noon, and piked back to the lake at 80. We were rowing slowly along the shore, | trying to beguiIe the festive muskal- longe from his haunts, but without | much success, when at about three o'clock I had 9 strike that nearly lifted me out of the boat and hooked fish that took me two days and a half to land. Don't stop--that is an absolute fact and I can prove it. I played the 1 fsh-I thought at the time it was stray whale--for about three hours, and |, when I was nearly ready to drop from exhaustion, I finally succeeded in get ting him up next to the boat, while half a hundred other fishermen in other boats came rowing over to see the fun and find out what I had hooked
 whether sperm whale or man-eating shark.
 'I had the fish up so close to the boat
 that I could almost lay my hands on
 him, when the Hon. John Sutton-bad luck to his careless soul-discovered that he had left the gaff hook on shore. Of course, you know that to catch a muskallonge you have to work him out into deep water. and as we were in the middle of the lake at the time we tried to work back to the shore to pick up the gaff. The whale in disguise knew what we were up to, I guess. for with one su- preme grand stand effort he made a
 break for liberty and got it, together with about hundred yards of three ply silk line. I was so exhausted and discouraged I wanted to jump into the drink after that king pin of the mus kies, but was restrained by the Hon. John.
 And now comes the hair-raising part of the tale Two days later, while row ing about the lake. I noticed a fish line floating around in the water. and being of thrifty disposition, caught hold of the end and began to pull it in. I had another narrow escape from drowning, and it came to me in minute that my