but the best and most difficult to make are the two-winged. We will suppose only one. Take the feather or feathers you have selected and lay the stub end on top of the shank, the tip of the wing pointing away from it; hold in this position by the left thumb and forefinger. Touch your thread with shellac and take two half hitches drawn tightly, then turn back the wing over the hook; touch the thread again with shellac, and take two half hitches over the bent feathers and around the hook as closely to the end as you can and not slip off. See that the wing sits right and does not lie too flat on the back. Draw very tightly and cut off the thread close, and your fly is complete, except the loop in the gut, which can be made either before or after the fly is made. To make this loop the gut must be soaked fifteen minutes. This is known as the reversed wing fly.

The two-winged fly is not usually made by reversing the feathers, although it can be so made. Each wing is put on separately; and it is much more difficult to make the head small. Neatness of finish requires that the head should be very small. This is always the great trouble with beginners. It is the correct thing for trout flies, but salmon and bass flies are often made with large heads. For trout flies, nature should be copied closely, but the large flies. for salmon, bass and pickerel resemble no living insect, and the amateur can suit his own fancy. Trout flies are rarely made with mixed wings, and are worthless when so made. For salmon and bass the mixed wings or wing is very beautiful and most attractive.

It requires the eye of an artist to mix colors rightly either in painting or flymaking, and it is best, though many colors are used, to have one color predominate in each fly.

Have five or six colored feathers before you; clip off, say, a dozen fibers of each, and separate each fiber carefully. Make as many flies as you have colors, and lay a fiber of each color on each pile. Try to have the fibers of equal length. Now, if you wish your fly to have, say, a bluish shade, take double the number of blue fibers (or even more) to any other color.

We will suppose you have tied on your silkworm gut, tail is fixed, body made (the latter being of the same color that predominates in the wing), hackle on (you can make it the whole length of the body, or at the head to represent legs only), and all ready for the wings. Roll all the piles of fibers together in one bunch carefully, so that the stub ends are even. You can tie them together if you choose, but this is not my practice. Touch your silk thread attached to the shank of the hook with shellac for about an inch, spreading it on the thread smoothly and evenly. Place your bunch of fibers on top of the shank and fasten by two or three half hitches drawn closely and tightly. After the shellac has thoroughly stiffened, say ten minutes, clip off the stub of the feathers closely and cover with the silk thread. Touch the head all over with shellac and the fly is complete; or you can make a head by taking a few turns of peacock herl, which is common in both salmon and bass flies.

For bass flies I usually dress the top of the wings with dark brown feathers, and for salmon flies with golden pheasant. Both are matters of choice or taste. The very gay flies should be on large hooks, the modest colors on medium size, and the very plain dark colors on small hooks.

The wings for most flies either for trout or salmon should stand well up. Most flies have the wings too flat on the back, which I think a mistake.

The plain hackles are sometimes very successful in waters rarely fished or in preserved ponds; but in much-fished streams, where the trout are educated by great experience, only the young fry from four to six ounces can be so easily seduced. Neatness of finish, smallness of size, and a copy as nearly as possible of the natural fly latest on the water will call up the old patriarchs and be conducive to a full basket. There are a

few flies that are almost always successful, because the natural fly they represent is more or less constantly on the water. The hackles may do very well on some days and in a particular state of the water and atmosphere when the trout cannot see clearly; but on bright, clear days and, low water, you must imitate nature closely to deceive the wary trout. This is my experience, and is not theory or book education.

Scene-Island of Diadama, four miles from Lake View.

Persons. Our angler and his boatman. in a skiff.

August 15th. A bar runs out from Diadama, north, veering a little west, for half a mile,, some three rods wide, with four feet of water falling off on either side into as many fathoms; its bottom is agates and pearls, its water crystal.

We are not going to describe it; if you would know what love is, go, look into the eye of a gazelle; if you would feel the witchery of enchantment, come and see Diadama Bar.

It has been hot all day with little wind, and we have been loafing around here till late in the afternoon. Joe is good at loafing, and I like Joe. To be good at loafing you must begin early; and then at fifty, if you are a perfect man, you would rather fish than work, and rather eat than fish, and rather sleep than all the rest together.

Joe has taken all the degrees in this Masonry, and is now a Royal Arch. I have begun late in life, but under his tuition am making rapid strides; but life is short.

Loafing is not a cardinal virtue; rather it is an alternate one. You practice it when you can do no better. All men have not this grace. Riches cannot loaf, its heart is too heavy with gold; high places cannot loaf, its soul is consumed with ambition; dullness cannot loaf, its head does not feel it, when it is full of it. Loafing is a term of polite contempt, used freely by the men of this world, who always make haste to dismiss every virtue and every praise with a bit of cheap slang. Now, in the humble dialect of the angler, loafing implies endurance, letting patience have her perfect work, biding our time.

We have been biding it for the last two mortal long hours, swinging idly here and there in this boat, and now it is six o'clock. I am looking up at Joe; his large blue eyes are gleaming with some strange fire, and his honest broad nostrils expand just like those of an old warhorse that is sniffing the sulphur and the carnage of battle. I never saw a warhorse do that or anything else. But Gen. Grant said it is a fact, and there was no bigger man than Grant. Joe speaks:

"The time is come; you are going to see the glory of Diadama to-night."

We stop to explain. Glory is an attribute of Niagara, and of Pike's Peak, and of Barnum's white elephant. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; but glory up here in the Back Bay means a big haul of fish. Now for Joe again:

"You are going to see the glory of Diadama to-night. The south wind. draws down the channel, and there's a current over the bar. The sunlight comes well aslant, and it's all like molten gold on the surface; you can see nothing. below, and the fish can see nothing above. The time is come. Fish in the gloaming."

He takes an oar for paddle, and puts the boat noiselessly in a chosen spot; then creeps like a cat to the bow-he's heavy, but he can do it when he's after fish—and softly puts the anchor down; then back to his seat.

I take up the Henshall and in an instant am struggling with a two-pound

bass.

"Joe, they are here."

"Yes, sir; and there goes my rod, smashed in the middle."

"Save the fish, Joe, and take my Henshall; I'll use the salmon rod. Fish honest, and do it well."

As fast as we could land them, five minutes per bass, the work went on till dark, till after dark an hour and a half, and then it ceased; and then a season with chub, one to two pounds, and then they ceased; and then a season with perch, eight ounces to a pound, and then they ceased; and then one little rockie, and then we ceased.

"Joe, it's pitch dark; no moon; sky is ink; hold up! How many?"

"Forty bass, sir, if I kept count right; should average two pounds; of nondescripts a butter-tub full."

"Can you account for this?"

Perhaps the bass get tired lying still all day down below, and come up here to wet their gills in running water; thę chub and perch follow to see what's up. If it was a school, and they stopped here, that's one thing; but if they were swimming along over, you must reckon 'way up in the thousands."

No place for our feet in the bottom of the boat, waterlogged with fish; we stretch our legs along the seats. I am tired. The steady dip of the oars under Joe's untiring arms invite to repose. I muse. Presently there's a thumping under the ribs; conscience speaks.

"Sir, is not this pot-fishing?" I begin to make excuse: "It is the first and only time; it was honest, with hook and line."

And then I thought I saw a mighty company of brother anglers hover like a cloud around me, and, seeing the abundant proofs of slaughter, cry out and call on Walton and Juliana Berners, and all the saints in our calendar.

"Smite him for a Paynim; he has besmirched the Banner."

When the thunderbolts are uplifted it's time to repent, and to be quick about it. All good men repent, when they're cornered. My head bows low down upon my breast, my face suffused with tears, my hands clutching for the rosary, my fingers feeling for the beads, when -presto-the Guardian Angel of our Golden Luck, hastening to avenge his high prerogative to give as he pleased, pours a flood of electric light upon the mimic scene-and that baseless fabric of a hypocritical fantasy melts into thin. air. Our heart smiles-then laughsthen guffaws.

"Wake up, sir; we are at Lake View; you have been asleep an hour."

"What! and is it all then a dream? Oh, no; this is my boat, and there are the fish, and these are my own legs,