“CATFISH JOHN” lived several miles farther up the shore. He was nearly eighty—at least, so he thought. Rheumatism had interfered with his activities to a considerable extent, and his net reels on the beach were getting a little harder to turn as the years rolled on. He considered the invasion of the dune country by the newcomers a great misfortune, al{116}though he was perfectly content to deal with them in a business way.

“Fifty years ago, when I fust come ’ere,” he said, “this country was sumpen to live in. There was some o’ the Injuns ’ere, but they didn’t never bother nobody. Thar was lots o’ game, an’ things ’round ’ere was pretty wild.”

“How did you happen to come here, John?” I asked.

“I come from down East on the Erie Canal, an’ I traveled out ’ere to see some land a feller was tryin’ to sell that ’e showed me on some maps ’e had. He said it was pretty wet, but it had thousands o’ huckleberry bushes on it, an’ the berries grew so thick the bushes all bent over with ’em.

“I didn’t ’ave much money, an’ I didn’t expect to pay much out, but I thought I’d come out an’ take a look at it. I didn’t see no huckleberries, but it was wet sure ’nough. If I’d ’a’ gone on it I’d ’a’ had to gone in a boat an’ feel fer the land with a pole, an’ if I’d wanted to live on it, I’d ’a’ had to growed some fins. It was a good thing fer that feller that he didn’t git that thar land onto me afore I’d seen it.{117}

“After I’d bin ’round ’ere fer a while, I built a cabin over on the river, five miles back o’ here. I got some slabs from the lumber comp’ny that was skinnin’ out the pine an’ robbin’ the guvament, an’ put up a good house. I stayed thar ’bout ten years, I guess.

“One night somebody knocked at the door. I opened it, an’ that stood three fellers. I asked ’em in, an’ we smoked an’ talked fer awhile, an’ I cooked ’em some pork. I had about fifty pounds outside in a bar’l, with a cover an’ a stone on it.

“In the mornin’ them fellers wanted to go fishin’. We went up the river a ways, an’ chopped some holes in the ice, an’ caught a lot o’ pick’rel. We took ’em to the cabin an’ put ’em on the roof to keep ’em away from the varmints. In the mornin’ I got up, an’ all that pork an’ them fish was gone, an’ so was them fellers. It’s bin forty years that I’ve bin watchin’ now, an’ I haint never seen them fellers since.”

John then relapsed into a reflective silence, and shifted his quid of “natural leaf,” that was filtering down through his unkempt whiskers. “Them fellers” were preying on his vindictive mind.{118}

“What do you do with them pitchers you make?” he asked.

“I just make them for fun.”

“I don’t see no fun makin’ them things. That was a feller along ’ere in the spring that used to set under an umbreller, when it wasn’t rainin’. He painted a pitcher o’ me, an’ then took it away with ’im. It had a lot o’ paint on it, an’ it was all rough. I don’t think ’e amounted to much.”

“Did it look like you, John?”

“I s’pose it did to him; ’e carried it off.”

John knew most of the outcasts along the beach for many miles. He occasionally visited some of them, particularly Sipes, to obtain extra supplies of fish, with an old gray horse and a dilapidated buggy frame—both of which were also rheumatic. On the wheels back of the seat he had mounted a big covered box for the fish, which he peddled over into the back country. Some of the fish were very dead, and the whole box was replete with mystery and suspicion.

“After the second day,” he said, “I sometimes give ’way them I haint sold.” Even at this price, some of them were probably quite expensive.{119}
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THE LITTLE SMOKE HOUSE

Snuggled up against the bluff, near the shanty he lived in, was an odd-looking little structure that John used for a smoke-house. When his fish became a little too passé to permit of ready sales, or, as he expressed it, “too soft,” he smoked them. Thus disguised, they were again ready for the channels of commerce.

He generally included some smoked fish in his{120} load when he started out, and usually it was not their first trip.

While his thrift was commendable, it was always best to let the output of that little smokehouse severely alone, for its roof, like charity, covered a multitude of sins.

Sipes declared that he always knew when the old man “was gittin’ ready to smoke fish, if the wind was right.”

His nickname had been acquired because of the yellow slimy things which he procured from the sluggish river, when the storms prevented supplies from the lake. A prodigious haul of catfish was made from the river one spring by a settler, who turned the catch over to John to peddle on shares.

“I loaded up them fish, an’ I peddled ’em clear to the Indianny line. I was gone a week, an’ I sold ’em all. When I got back that feller said ’e hadn’t never seen no fish peddled like them was.”

I tried to get him to talk about some of the characters he had met in his travels, but he said he “didn’t never ask no questions of nobody.” Then, after a long silence, he remarked, reflectively, “I{121} guess them fellers that stole the pork prob’ly left the country.”
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JOHN’S METHOD OF TAKING A BATH

Catfish John apparently relied on the heavenly rains, when he got caught in them, to keep him clean, and on the golden sunshine that followed them to remove the traces of these involuntary and infrequent ablutions.

I doubt if he suspected the existence of soap.{122} Such cleanliness as he possessed must have been in his heart, for it was invisible.

I once asked John to allow me to spend a day with him on one of his peddling trips to the village, and he cheerfully consented.

“I don’t git lonesome, but it ’ud be nice to have somebody ’long,” he said.

I was to meet him at five o’clock the following morning at Sipes’s place. I inwardly rebelled at the unseemly hour, but those who would derive the full measure of enjoyment with Catfish John must not be particular about hours.

I rowed along the shore, and was at the trysting place promptly. Fortunately I had a slight cold, and was thereby better enabled to resist some of the odors that I was likely to encounter during the day.

Sipes was dumfounded when I explained the object of the early visit.

“You cert’nly must be lookin’ fer trouble,” he declared; “if ye want to spend a day like that, why don’t ye go over an’ set quiet ’round ’is smokehouse, instid o’ bein’ bumped along on ’is honey cart all day?{123}”

The air was still, and the low, gentle swells out on the water were opalescent in the early morning light. Sipes had just returned from a visit to his set-lines and gill-nets, over a mile away in the lake. He had started about two o’clock, and his boat on the beach contained the slimy merchandise which we were to convert into what Sipes called “cash-money” during the day.

We went down to the shore to inspect the catch. Numerous flopping tails and other unavailing protests against uncongenial environment were evident in the boat. There were fifteen or twenty Whitefish, about a dozen carp, several suckers, and a lot of good-sized perch, which had been found in the gill-nets. The set-lines had yielded two sturgeon, one weighing about thirty-five pounds and the other over fifty. These two finny victims dominated the boat.

“I swatted ’em when I took ’em in, but they seem to be gittin’ gay agin,” remarked Sipes, as he reached for an old axe handle lying near the bow. The struggling fish soon became quiet.

“There comes yer old college friend,” he said, as he glanced up the beach. The rheumatic horse{124} was patiently pulling the odd vehicle along the shore, near the water line where the sand was firm, partially concealing the bent figure with the faded slouch hat on the seat behind him.

“I’d know that ol’ hat if I seen it at the South Pole,” said Sipes. “It turns up in front an’ flops down behind. It’s got some little holes in the top, through which some wind blows when ’e’s wearin’ it. He’s ’ad it ever since I come on the beach, an’ that wasn’t yisterd’y, neither, an’ they ain’t no other lid that ’ud look right on John, an’ they ain’t nobody else that ’ud wear it fer a minute. He needn’t never be ’fraid that anybody’s goin’ to swipe it, ’specially ’round ’ere.”

After the conventional greetings, flavored with much bantering and playful innuendoes by Sipes concerning the disreputable society which some nice fresh fish were about to get into, the two worthies weighed the catch, in installments, on some steelyards with a tin pan attachment, which were kept in the shanty. Sipes made a memorandum with a stubby pencil on the inside of the door, where his accounts were kept. “I got so dam’ many things to think of that I can’t keep track of {125}’em ’less I jot ’em down,” he remarked, as he slowly and laboriously inscribed some figures on the rough board.

John had a few fish in his box that he had found in his own nets that morning, and a few more that Sipes said “didn’t look recent” and “must ’ave bin caught some time previous.”

The fish that Sipes had brought in were turned over to John on a consignment basis. It was their custom to divide the proceeds equally. Sipes considered that old John was “pufectly honest about everythin’ but cash-money an’ fish.” He therefore kept “strict ’count o’ wot goes out an’ wot comes back.” The inside of the door was covered with a maze of hieroglyphics, the complicated records of previous transactions.

“If I wasn’t strictly honest at all times,” said Sipes, confidentially, while John was out of hearing, “I’d slip some hunks o’ lead that I use fer sinkers on the set-lines down the gullets o’ them sturgeon. I can git lead fer six cents a pound an’ sturgeon is worth twenty. If anybody found the hunks they’d think they’d bin eat offen the lines, but of course I wouldn’t do nothin’ like that; an{126}’ besides, them big fish has to be dressed ’fore they’re weighed, an’ they ’ave to be cut in chunks fer small sales. A sturgeon that only weighs about six or seven pounds an’ don’t ’ave to be cut open ’fore ’e’s sold, can swallow a couple o’ sinkers without hurtin’ ’is digestion any.”

After all necessary details had been attended to, we climbed into the seat and started. Sipes winked at me impressively, and his last words were, “Don’t you fellers take in no bad money.”

He had several ways of opening and closing his single eye, which were very different from winking it naturally. He would wink with the whole side of his face, thereby conveying various subtle meanings which words could not express.

As we departed, the old man, with a final wave of his hand, disappeared into his shanty to prepare his breakfast. John had brought him a few fresh eggs, and Sipes hoped that “they wouldn’t hatch ’fore they got to the kittle.”

The poor old horse had rather a hard time pulling the additional burden through the sand. This interesting animal was quite a character. He was somewhere in the early twenties, and his name was{127} “Napoleon.” John had bought him from a farmer for ten dollars. The horse was sick and not expected to live, but it transpired that what he really needed was a long rest. This he was in a fair way of getting when John came to look at him.
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Napoleon

The old fisherman built a little shanty for him, put a lot of dead leaves and straw into it, fed him well, and in the course of a few weeks the patient began to evince an interest in his surroundings. “Doc” Looney came over to see him and volun{128}teered to prescribe, but John refused to permit Doc to give anything but an opinion. Sipes claimed that John had thereby greatly safeguarded the original investment.

“If Doc wouldn’t give patients nothin’ but opinions, most of ’em would pull through, but ’is opinions’ll make me sick even when I’m well,” Sipes declared.

Napoleon was finally able to get into the harness that was constructed for him out of various straps and odds and ends of other harnesses that John had picked up around the country. Several pieces of rope and frayed clothes-line were also utilized, and when it was all assembled it was quite an effective harness.

The convalescent was taken only on short trips at first, but he gradually became stronger, and, with the exception of a limp in his left foreleg, he got along very well. His speed was not great. He walked most of the time, but occasionally broke into a peculiar trot that was not quite as fast as his walk. His trotting was mostly up and down. Like many people, whom we all know, he was inclined to mistake motion for progress. He was{129} more successful when he recognized his limitations, and adhered strictly to the method of locomotion to which he was naturally adapted.

His intelligence might be called selective. He understood “Whoa!” perfectly, and obeyed it instantly, but “Giddap!” was not quite so clear to him. He could not talk about his rheumatic leg, and thus suffered from one great disadvantage that made him more agreeable to those around him.

I asked John how the horse happened to be called Napoleon, but he did not know. He was equally ignorant concerning the animal’s eminent blood-stained namesake. He thought he “was some fightin’ feller in Europe,” but did not know “which side ’e was on.”

The world execrates its petty criminals, and immortalizes its great malefactors. As Napoleon, for selfish ends, caused the destruction of countless lives, instead of one, his glory should reach even unto Catfish John.

If the poor little horse had been called “Rembrandt” or “Shakespeare,” the name would have been just as heavy for him to bear, but it would suggest good instead of evil to enlightened minds.{130} He was, however, oblivious to all these things, and went on his humble way, thinking probably only of his oats and the queer smells that emanated from the fish-box.

We proceeded about half a mile along the shore, and took the road that led through the sand hills into the back country. When we got to the marshy strip, we bumped along over the corduroy for quite a distance, but the road became better when we got to higher ground. As soon as we arrived on firm soil, Napoleon stopped. A fat man with a green basket was advancing hurriedly along the edge of the thin timber, about a quarter of a mile away, and the horse probably surmised that his coming was in some way connected with a rest.

The fat man was a picturesque figure, and we watched his progress with interest. His embonpoint was rendered more conspicuous by the legs of his breeches, which were about twice as large and not as long as appeared to be necessary. The wide ends flapped to and fro about nine inches above his feet as he ambled along. The garment was ridiculous simply because it did not happen{131} to be “in style” at the time. A faint and mysterious whisper from the unknown gods who dictate the absurdities in human attire would immediately invest its masses and contours with elegance and propriety, and those we now wear would appear as outrageous, artistically, as they really are. The freaks of vanity are the mockeries of art.

“Them are high-water pants all right, an’ some day I’m goin’ to have some like ’em,” remarked John.

It might be suggested that “trousers” are breeches which are in style, and “pants” are those which are not. Gentlemen wear trousers and “gents” wear “pants.”

“That ol’ feller lives in that brown house over in the clearin’ yonder,” said John. “His name is Dan’l Smith. He’s got two sons, an’ them an’ ’is wife do all the work now, an’ ’e’s got fat settin’ ’round an’ eatin’ everythin’ in sight. He trots over ’ere when ’e sees me comin’ an’ gits fish. He’s partic’lar ’bout ’em bein’ fresh, an’ ’e likes to git ’em when I first start out. He’s a good customer, but ’e owes me a lot o’ money. He says ’e’s got{132} some money comin’ from a patent he’s inventin’, an’ I’ll have to wait awhile. This patent’s to keep flies offen cows when they’re bein’ milk............