The Sauk Centre herald., 1909-08-12
HITS AND MRS

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Perham at IL O'Clock at night during
the fishing season. The hotel is
built of dark-red brick, which gives
the house cross look at night.
Twelve large easy beer kegs, uphols-
tered in rush-the-growler hand work
ed leather, occupy the porch. These
are used during the day by twelve
able-bodied, but poor men for the
town. They handled the important
questions of the day in a decided
manner, punctuating their talk by
borrowing chewing tobacco of each
other until their supply is exhausted,
when they tackel strangers. You
have to go into the office before you
can get into the bar, which is not
running after IL o'clock at night,
unless the stranger has some promi-
nent ailment. If he has, the landlord
is sympathetic. One prominent fea-
ture of the hotel is the quantity of
the food left carelessly on the dinning
room table. If a guest had large
basket, he could carry away enough
food to last poor, but hungry fami-
ly, ten days. In the morning, the
call boy, who is also the bar tender,
clerk and yard man, calls you with
his foot. He does this by kicking
the door until it aches. After swear
ing at a dog. which has followed him
upstairs in the hope of getting rid
of few fleas, he tells you to get
up, that a team is waiting to take,
you to the lake, where the fish are
biting like college graduates on mo-
theirs doughnuts. After some violent
exercise in the dinning room, you
find that the team is waiting in the
barn for oats, and you have an hour
to buy fishing tackle in the Perham
department store. You can buy con-
siderable in an hour and when the
team arrives, you have enough fish
ing machinery for four lakes
The driver starts in gladly, to tell
you of the country and the people.
Behind a large red barn on hill,
a woman was gathering milk from
cross, but healthy looking cow.
Her oldest son was away from home
preparing himself for the state peni-
tentiary at the county Jail. He was
clerk in the bank, played in the
band, also in the saloon. His poor
playing was the cause of his down.
fall.
The liveryman drove an interesting
team. The tall, iron gray, which had
sore shoulder and pleasant look
ing feet, had ten years previous, won
the free-for-all at the county fair,
beating the Kentucky breds, thorough
breds, and hay feeds from all over
the country. The driver was carried
on the shoulders of his admiring and
rather intoxicated friends to the near
est saloon, where short speeches and
short drinks were indulged in, and
az a late hour, he was carried home
on a grain door.
The other horse, which was the off
horse, was possessed of rich cream
color and a bad habit of securing the
lire under his tail. When he shut
his tail down on the line, it was held
as tight as the base ball umpire's bad
decision.
We arrived at the lake too early
for dinner, and too late for the morn
ing's fishing, but we had no time to
fool away looking at the farm, stock
and home, and we hastily made ar
rangements to catch fish. We
brought a pail full of bloated frogs,
which would frighten dog, let
alone a fish looking for scare. We
hired a boat, and started out. The
lake was as smooth as glass front
in a furniture store, and the sun was
working like a red hot stove frying
doughnuts for a threshing crew.
The boatsman said he would take us
around to where an undertaken from
Vermont caught a five-pOund bass the
night before. We urged him to hur-
re- with a mosquito net cigar, which
comes in volumes of five for ten
cents. He lit up the wrong end,
and rowed fast to get away from the
smoke, which seemed to make the
frogs sick. After securing a frog to
one of my new weed lodging hooks,
I was ready for business. My bait
looked like a section mans shirt
hanging on the clothes line filled with
northwest wind. The boatman slowed
up near some rushes, and told me to
cast. / cast. My frog went in the