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Updated: May 7, 2025
Still a third was a little sawed-off, freckled-faced, red-headed Irishman, who drove a cab through London fogs in winter, poled my punt among the lily-pads in summer, and hung wall-paper between times. These I knew and loved; even now the cockles of my heart warm up when I think of them. Others I knew and liked; the difference being simply one of personality.
His beard was already well grown, and his clothes had become worn by the brush and faded by the sun and rain. In the course of the morning he lay in wait very patiently near a spot overflowed by the river, where, the day before, he had noticed lily-pads growing. After a time a doe and a spotted fawn came and stood ankle-deep in the water, and ate of the lily-pads.
The person, with murder in his heart, chooses a cloudy night, seats himself, rifle in hand, in a canoe, which is noiselessly paddled by the guide, and explores the shore of the lake or the dark inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light in a "jack," the rays of which are shielded from the boat and its occupants. A deer comes down to feed upon the lily-pads. The boat approaches him.
The sole companion of the doe was her only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat was just beginning to be mottled with the beautiful spots which make this young creature as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father, had been that night on a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond, and had not yet returned: he went ostensibly to feed on the succulent lily-pads there.
Our Porky and the other bachelor could not agree at all. They both wanted the same place and the same lily-pads, and in a little while they were pushing and shoving and growling and snarling with all their might, each doing his best to drive the other off the log and into the water.
Above the town, just beyond the red iron bridge, the river made a great bend and widened into a lake where the banks were willow-grown, and reeds and rushes and grasses and lily-pads pushed far out into mid-stream, leaving only a narrow channel of clear water. To the Big Bend our canoe glided often, paddling lazily along and going far up-stream to drift back with the current.
The forest had drawn to either side to let us pass. Here were the wilder reaches after the intimacies of the little river. Across stretches of marsh we could see an occasional great blue heron standing mid-leg deep. Long strings of ducks struggled quacking from invisible pools. The faint marsh odour saluted our nostrils from the point where the lily-pads flashed broadly, ruffling in the wind.
If this be neatly done and if the bait be made as it should be, at every short halt the legs will spread naturally and the imitation is perfect enough to deceive the most experienced bass or pickerel. When half a dozen casts to right and left have been made without success, it is best to move on, still keeping inside and casting outside the lily-pads.
He was allowed quarter of an hour for pressgang work, and sure enough he came back within a very reasonable time with a few spare hands, and then paddling and poling for dear life we glided swiftly through the tangled lily-pads and the green rosettes of the Singhara, and soon were in medias res and fairly committed to the deep.
In summer moose feed about the ponds and streams, on the long grasses and lily-pads. They're at home in the water, and mighty fine swimmers; so the red men say that they came first from the sea. "In the fall, and through the winter too, so far as I can make out, they eat the twigs and bark of different trees, such as white birches and poplars.
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