Record of the descendants of John Alexander

156 The (Descendants of
— imports from Ireland — howling as if Pandemonium
had broken loose! All this was but a prelude to the
hue and cry that made the woods and welkin ring when
some lurking fox, starting from his lair, went flying
along his circling course. The keen-scented dogs in
the maddening rout spared neither tongues nor heels.
Neither did horse or rider care who should break leg,
hack or neck in clearing fences or ditches, plunging
through streams and thickets, clashing up and down
rocky steeps, eager to "top the chase" with the fore-
most dog. The perseverance and endurance of those
Irish dogs enabled them to run the whole day under
-full cry!"
When greater age and corpulence unfitted him for
farm labor, he betook himself to retirement and books,
diversified by almost daily trips to the streams or woods
for fish or game. Superior skill in these sports kept
his table well supplied with trout, wild fowl and veni-
son in their seasons. Nor did he fail to enliven the
repast by narrating interesting incidents of the hunting
and angling.
No one knew better the haunts of the speckled trout
among the rapids and eddies of the Kishacoquillas, or
how to practice the precepts of the poet who said :
" There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly,
And as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap,
Then fix with gentle twitch the barbed hook :
Some lightly tossing to the grassy- bi.uk
And to the shelving rocks slow dragging some.
But should you lure
From his dark haunts beneath the tangled roots
Of pendant trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behooves jou then to ply your nicest art.
L >ng time he following cautious scans the fly,