Hardly the worst of us Here could have smiled!- Words of a child; Prattle that had for stops Look. She is sad to miss, Tries to be bright, Good to mamma, and sweet. Ah, if beside the dead If the grief died; but no;— -Austin Dobson. Questions: Can you guess the nationality of Austin Dobson, the man who wrote this poem? Do you prefer this poem to All Quiet Along the Potomac? Do people usually think seriously of this side of war when troubles between nations are brewing? Is it desirable to keep in mind poems of this kind? THE STORY OF A SALMON1 (We all have great respect for any man or woman who knows more about any subject than any other person in the world. For this reason we honor Dr. David Starr Jordan, who is generally acknowledged to be the leading authority in all the world on fishes. This life-story of a salmon proves that Dr. Jordan knows how to tell a science story in a way highly interesting to boys and girls. Many California boys and girls know Dr. Jordan personally, for this great scientist and writer lives at Palo Alto. He was president of Stanford University for many years.) IN 'N THE realm of the Northwest Wind, on the boundary line between the dark fir-forests and the sunny plains, there stands a mountain-a great white cone, two miles and a half in perpendicular height. On its lower mile the dense fir-woods cover it with never-changing green; farther up a lighter green of grass and bushes gives place in winter to white; and at the top the snows of the great ice age still linger in unspotted purity. The people of the State of Washington say that their mountain is the great "king-pin of the universe," which shows that even in its own country Mount Rainier is not without honor. Flowing down from the southwest slope of Mount Rainier is a cold, clear river fed by the melting snows of the mountain. Madly it hastens down over white cascades and beds of shining sands, through birch-woods and belts of dark firs, to mingle its waters at last with those of the great Columbia. The river is the Cowlitz, and on its bed, not many years ago, there lay half buried in the sand a number of little, orange-colored globules, each about as large as a pea. These globules were not much in themselves, but were great in possibilities. In the water above, little suckers, chubs, and prickly sculpins strained their mouths to draw them from the sand; and vicious crawfishes picked them up with their clumsy hands and examined them with their telescopic eyes. 'From David Starr Jordan's Science Sketches. Copyrighted by A. C. McClurg & Company. One, at least, of the globules escaped their curiosity, else this story would not be told. The sun shone down on it through the clear water, the ripples of the Cowlitz said over it their incantations, and in it at last awoke a living being. It was a fish, a curious little fellow, not half an inch long, with great, staring eyes, and with a body so transparent that he could not cast a shadow. He was a little salmon; but the water was good, and there were flies, worms, and living creatures in abundance for him to eat, and he soon became a larger salmon. Then there were many more little salmon with him, some larger and some smaller, and they all had a merry time. Those who had been born soonest and had grown largest used to chase the others around and bite off their tails, or take them by the heads and swallow them whole; "for," said they, "even young salmon are good eating." "Heads I win, tails you lose," was their motto. By and by, when all the salmon were too large to be swallowed, they began to grow restless. They saw that the water rushing by seemed to be in a great hurry to get somewhere, and it was somehow suggested that its hurry was caused by something good to eat at the other end of its course. Then they all started down the stream, salmon-fashion, which fashion is to get into the current, head up-stream, and thus to drift backward as the river sweeps along. Down the Cowlitz River the salmon went for a day and a night, finding much to interest them. At last they began to grow hungry. Coming near the shore, they saw an angleworm of rare size and beauty floating in an eddy of the stream. Quick as thought one of them opened his mouth, which was well filled with teeth of different sizes, and swallowed the angleworm. Quicker still he felt a sharp pain in his gills, followed by a smothering sensation, and in an instant his comrades saw him rise straight into the air. This was nothing new to them, for they often leaped out of the water in their games of hide-and-seek, but only to come down again with a loud splash not far from the place where they had gone out. This one, however, never came back, and the others went on their course wondering. At last they came to the spot where the Cowlitz and the Columbia join, and for a time they were almost lost. They could find no shores, and the bottom and the top of the water were far apart. Here they saw other and far larger salmon in the deepest part of the current, turning neither to the right nor to the left but swimming right on up-stream as fast as they could. These great salmon would not stop for them, and would not lie and float with the current. They had no time to eat; they had no time to talk even in the simple sign language by which fishes express their ideas. They had important work before them, and the time was short. So they went on up the river, keeping their great purposes to themselves; and our little salmon and his friends from the Cowlitz drifted down the stream. By and by the water began to change. It grew denser, and no longer flowed rapidly along; and twice a day it turned about and flowed the other way. Then the shores disappeared, and the water began to have a different and peculiar flavor-a flavor which seemed to the salmon much richer and more inspiring than the glacier-water of their native Cowlitz. There were many curious creatures to be seen-crabs with hard shells and savage faces, but good when crushed and swallowed. There were luscious squid swimming about, and, to a salmon, squid is like ripe peaches and cream to a boy. There were great companies of delicate sardines and herring, green and silvery, and it was fun to chase and capture them. Those persons who eat sardines packed in oil by greasy fingers, and herring dried in smoke, can have little idea how satisfying it is to have a meal of these, fresh from the sea, plump, sleek, and silvery. Thus the salmon chased the herring about and had a merry time. They in turn were chased by great sea-lions-swimming monsters with huge half-human faces, long thin whiskers, and blundering ways. And the sea-lions and the herring scattered the salmon about, till at length the hero of our story found himself quite alone. That did not give him much trouble. He went on his own way, getting his dinner when hungry, which was all the time, and then eating a little between meals. So it went on for three long years. At the end of that time our little fish had grown to be a great, fine salmon of twentytwo pounds' weight, shining like a new tin pan, and having rows of beautiful round black spots on his head, back, and tail. One day while he was swimming about, the salmon noticed a change in the water around him. Spring had come again, and the south-lying snowdrifts and the Cascade Mountains once more felt that the "earth was wheeling sunward." The cold snow-waters ran down from the mountains and into the Columbia River and made a freshet. The high water went far out into the sea, and out in the sea our salmon felt it on his gills. He remembered how the cold water used to feel in the Cowlitz when he was a little fish. In a blundering, fishy fashion, he thought about it. He wondered whether the little eddy looked as it used to look, and whether the caddis-worms and young mosquitoes were really as sweet and tender as he used to think they were. He thought some other things; but no man can tell what, because no man has ever been a salmon. What our salmon did, we know. He did what every grown salmon in the ocean does when he feels the glacier-water once more upon his gills. He became a changed being. He spurned the blandishments of soft-shelled crabs. The pleasures of the chase, heretofore his only delights, lost their charms for him. He turned his course straight toward the direction whence the cold water came, and for the rest of his life never tasted a mouthful of food. |