Frenzied Fiction, Stephen Leacock [books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

because of prohibition. But we go and sit there. It is a good place to sit, and, after all, what else can you do in the present state of the law?

So it was there that we arranged the party.

The thing somehow seemed to fall into the mood of each of us. Jones said he had been hoping that some of the boys would get up a fishing party. It was apparently the one kind of pleasure that he really cared for. For myself I was delighted to get in with a crowd of regular fishermen like these four, especially as I hadn’t been out fishing for nearly ten years, though fishing is a thing I am passionately fond of. I know no pleasure in life like the sensation of getting a four-pound bass on the hook and hauling him up to the top of the water, to weigh him. But, as I say, I hadn’t been out for ten years. Oh, yes, I live right beside the water every summer, and yes, certainly—I am saying so—I am passionately fond of fishing, but still somehow I hadn’t been out. Every fisherman knows just how that happens. The years have a way of slipping by. Yet I must say I was surprised to find that so keen a sport as Jones hadn’t been out—so it presently appeared—for eight years. I had imagined he practically lived on the water. And Colonel Morse and Kernin, I was amazed to find, hadn’t been out for twelve years, not since the day—so it came out in conversation—when they went out together in Lake Rosseau and Kernin landed a perfect monster, a regular corker, five pounds and a half, they said; or no, I don’t think he landed him. No, I remember, he didn’t land him. He caught him—and he could have landed him, he should have landed him—but he didn’t land him. That was it. Yes, I remember Kernin and Morse had a slight discussion about it—oh, perfectly amicable—as to whether Morse had fumbled with the net or whether Kernin—the whole argument was perfectly friendly—had made an ass of himself by not “striking” soon enough. Of course the whole thing was so long ago that both of them could look back on it without any bitterness or ill nature. In fact it amused them. Kernin said it was the most laughable thing he ever saw in his life to see poor old Jack—that’s Morse’s name—shoving away with the landing net wrong side up. And Morse said he’d never forget seeing poor old Kernin yanking his line first this way and then that and not knowing where to try to haul it. It made him laugh to look back at it.

They might have gone on laughing for quite a time, but Charlie Jones interrupted by saying that in his opinion a landing net is a piece of darned foolishness. Here Popley agrees with him. Kernin objects that if you don’t use a net you’ll lose your fish at the side of the boat. Jones says no: give him a hook well through the fish and a stout line in his hand and that fish has got to come in. Popley says so too. He says let him have his hook fast through the fish’s head with a short stout line, and put him (Popley) at the other end of that line and that fish will come in. It’s got to. Otherwise Popley will know why. That’s the alternative. Either the fish must come in or Popley must know why. There’s no escape from the logic of it.

But perhaps some of my readers have heard the thing discussed before.

So, as I say, we decided to go the next morning and to make an early start. All of the boys were at one about that. When I say “boys,” I use the word, as it is used in fishing, to mean people from say forty-five to sixty-five. There is something about fishing that keeps men young. If a fellow gets out for a good morning’s fishing, forgetting all business worries, once in a while—say, once in ten years—it keeps him fresh.

We agreed to go in a launch, a large launch—to be exact, the largest in the town. We could have gone in row boats, but a row boat is a poor thing to fish from. Kernin said that in a row boat it is impossible properly to “play” your fish. The side of the boat is so low that the fish is apt to leap over the side into the boat when half “played.” Popley said that there is no comfort in a row boat. In a launch a man can reach out his feet and take it easy. Charlie Jones said that in a launch a man could rest his back against something, and Morse said that in a launch a man could rest his neck. Young inexperienced boys, in the small sense of the word, never think of these things. So they go out and after a few hours their necks get tired; whereas a group of expert fishers in a launch can rest their backs and necks and even fall asleep during the pauses when the fish stop biting.

Anyway all the “boys” agreed that the great advantage of a launch would be that we could get a man to take us. By that means the man could see to getting the worms, and the man would be sure to have spare lines, and the man could come along to our different places—we were all beside the water—and pick us up. In fact the more we thought about the advantage of having a “man” to take us the better we liked it. As a boy gets old he likes to have a man around to do the work.

Anyway Frank Rolls, the man we decided to get, not only has the biggest launch in town but what is more Frank knows the lake. We called him up at his boat-house over the phone and said we’d give him five dollars to take us out first thing in the morning provided that he knew the shoal. He said he knew it.

I don’t know, to be quite candid about it, who mentioned whisky first. In these days everybody has to be a little careful. I imagine we had all been thinking whisky for some time before anybody said it. But there is a sort of convention that when men go fishing they must have whisky. Each man makes the pretence that one thing he needs at six o’clock in the morning is cold raw whisky. It is spoken of in terms of affection. One man says the first thing you need if you’re going fishing is a good “snort” of whisky; another says that a good “snifter” is the very thing; and the others agree that no man can fish properly without “a horn,” or a “bracer” or an “eye-opener.” Each man really decides that he himself won’t take any. But he feels that, in a collective sense, the “boys” need it.

So it was with us. The Colonel said he’d bring along “a bottle of booze.” Popley said, no, let him bring it; Kernin said let him; and Charlie Jones said no, he’d bring it. It turned out that the Colonel had some very good Scotch at his house that he’d like to bring; oddly enough Popley had some good Scotch in his house too; and, queer though it is, each of the boys had Scotch in his house. When the discussion closed we knew that each of the five of us was intending to bring a bottle of whisky. Each of the five of us expected the other to drink one and a quarter bottles in the course of the morning.

I suppose we must have talked on that veranda till long after one in the morning. It was probably nearer two than one when we broke up. But we agreed that that made no difference. Popley said that for him three hours’ sleep, the right kind of sleep, was far more refreshing than ten. Kernin said that a lawyer learns to snatch his sleep when he can, and Jones said that