HOW THE LADIES FISH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 715, 31 December 1875, Page 3

HOW THE LADIES FISH.

~o ~ There’s generally about six of them in the bunch with light dresses on, and they have three poles with as many hooks and lines among them. As soon as they get up to Mosertown they look for a good place to get down on the r«frs, and the most venturesome one sticks her boot heels in the bank and makes two careful steps down ; then she suddenly finds herself at the bottom with both hands in the water and a feeling that everybody in this wide world is looking at her, and she never tells anybody how she got there. Hie other girls, profitting by her example, turn around and go down the bank on their hands and toes, backwards. Then they scamper over the rafts until they find a shallow place where they can see the fish and shout—- ‘ Oh! I see one.’ ‘ Where V ‘ There.’ ‘Oh ! my, so he is.’ ‘ Let’s catch him.’ ‘ Whose got them baits V ‘ Somebody’s got my hook.' ' You lazy thing you’re sitting on my pole.’ * Show me the wretch that stole my worm.’ All these exclamations are got off in a tone that awakens every lazy echo within a mile around, and sends every fish within three acres square in gallopping hysterics. Then the girls by supeihuman exertions get a worm on the hook and ‘throw in’ with a splash like the launching of a washtub, and await the result. When a silver-fin comes along and nibbles the bait they pn.ll up with a jerk that, had anv unfortunate fish weighing less than fifteen pounds been on the hook, would have landed it in the neighborhood of the new church on College Hill. A fter a while a feeble-minded sunfish contrives to got fastened on the hook of a timid Csherwoman and sho gives tonguo :

‘ Oh 1 somethin’s got my Imok !’ ‘ Full up, you little idgzut!’ shout five excited voices as poles ami hooks are dropped and they rush to the rescue. The girl with the bite gives a spasmodic jerk, which scuds the unhappy ‘ sunny ’ into the air the full length of forty feet of lino, and he comes down on the nearest culy head with a damp flop, that sets the girl to clawing as though there were bumblebees in her hair. ‘Ouch! Murder! take it away. TT gb, the nasty thing !’ Then they bold up their skirts and gather about that fish as it skips over die logs, and all the time holding the line in both hands, witli her foot on the pole, as though she had an evildisposed goat at the other end. which she expected to butt her at any moment. Then they talk over it ‘ How over will we get it off!’ ‘ Ain’t it pretty V ‘ Look how it pants.’ ‘ Wonder if it ain’t dry f ‘ Boor little thing, let’s put it back.’ ‘ How will we get the hook from it.’ ‘ Pick it up,’ says a girl who backs rapidly out of the circle. ‘ Good gracious, I’m afraid of it. I here it’s opening its mouth at me ’ Just then the ‘ sunny ’ wriggles off the hook and disappears between two logs into the water, and the girls t>y for another bite. But the sun comes down and fries the backs of their necks, and they get no m ire bites but fly i.ites, and they get three headaches in the party and they get all cross and scold at die fish like so many magpies. If an unwary chub darts to show himself in- the water they poke at him with their poles, much to his disgust. Finally they get mad all over and throw their poles away, hunt up the lunch basket, climb up into the woods, where they sit around on the grass and caterpillars, and eat enough of dried beef and rusk and hard boiled eggs to give a wood ’ horse the nightmare, after which they compare notes about their beaux until sundown, when they go home and plant envy in the hearts of all their monsliudelaiue friends by telling what ‘just a splendid time ’ they had.