was relating his experience upon his return, "that you would keep behind you in troutfishing is no obstacle here, the secret being to arouse the curiosity of the fish by a dexterous handling of the oar while keeping the sun in its eyes. This method, which you see is successful, is peculiar to the Florida reef. The barracuda, though not strictly a surface fish, lies generally three or four feet from it, in wait for the schools of small fry that frequent a similar depth, and to the expert hand-line fisherman it affords rare sport."

From the upper end of Long Key this was demonstrated on another occasion. The reef extended off with clear white sandy bottom in water about four feet deep, and, in walking along, barracudas two or three feet in length were often seen darting seaward.

The judge carried his line, which was similar in color and size to the one used for snapperfishing, in a large coil over his arm, explaining that it could not tangle, as it had been stretched forty-eight hours at severe tension, and was always stretched moderately after using. The hook was fastened to a slender copper wire two feet in length, and a mullet five inches long being impaled, it was thrown out ahead of the first barracuda sighted.

The splash attracted the notice of the fish, which moved forward; but seeing that the bait was dead, it instantly regained its former motionless position between surface and bottom. Now a quivering motion was imparted to the bait, which seemed struggling to escape, waving to and fro under the adroit manipulation of the fisherman, movements that were not lost upon the watchful barracuda. Dropping its muzzle, it sank slowly and gently to the bottom, and moved imperceptibly upon the bait, creeping upon it as a cat would upon a bird, then backing off as if suspicious. The slightest overdoing of the motion aroused its incredulity, and the clever simulation of life urged it on, until finally it seized the mullet, rose quickly from the bottom, and with quick gulps swallowed it. It was then that the hook struck home, and like a shot the blue-hued fish was high in air, bending and shaking its savage jaws in agony and surprise, and for some moments giving the fisherman ample scope for an exposition of dexterity and skill.

As he brought the fish in the judge remarked, "I myself see no sport in the heavy-sinker, deepwater hand-line fishing, but thus outwitting a gamy fish, where you can watch his every move in the clear water and feel every thrill through the medium of the line, is to me pleasure that I do not obtain from the rod."

"But," urged the colonel," I could use a rod in a similar way after short practice."

"You forget," replied the judge, laughing

VOL. XLII.— 2.

at his friend's persistence, "that the rod that would land an eighty-pound striped bass would not, unless I am greatly mistaken, be a match for a barracuda of equal weight; the action and activity of the fish are entirely different."

It must be admitted, however, in defense of the champion of the rod, that he succeeded later in killing a thirty-pound barracuda, although his season of triumph was of short duration. An early riser, he was often on the reef at sunrise, taking advantage of the dead calms that are so characteristic of the locality, frequently for days not a ripple save that occasioned by the breakers on the barrier reef disturbing the glassy surface. One morning he returned and aroused the judge and Paublo with a magnificent jack nearly two feet long. that he had taken with his favorite silver doctor.

"It rose like a salmon," he said exultantly, "and I was thirty minutes in landing it." "Did you see any others?" asked the judge, with a twinkle of merriment in his gray eye. "No," replied the jubilant angler; "I was satisfied with this, and it fully demonstrates that the rod has no restrictions."

"Scuse me, sah," said Paublo, who was ganging hooks hard by, "but w'en de jacks come, sah, yo' better leave disher pole in de bag."

But the colonel was not to be deterred, and later in the day was standing at the place of his morning's exploit, gracefully whipping the warm waters for a companion jack, his book of flies on the sand. At the stand he had taken the channel was forty feet away, so that the fly was dropped delicately upon its borders at every cast.

The judge and Paublo were a thousand yards up the narrow key endeavoring to secure some live bait with a cast-net, the crash of which, as it fell when hurled by the bait-catcher, being the only sound that broke the stillness of the calm. The fly-fisherman had been casting half an hour with creditable patience, when the others heard a hail, and, turning and hurrying towards him, became laughing witnesses to a most extraordinary spectacle. The colonel was waist-deep in the water, wielding his rod in a manner that would have attracted the attention of the ghost of Walton himself. He held it over his head, now pushing it backward, now down and up, the tip undergoing a tremendous strain, and the rod and caster seemingly involved in indescribable confusion. The water about him appeared to be boiling, as if under the influence of some sudden irruption, while fish from a foot to two and a half feet in length were leaping into the air by thousands, striking his body, dashing over his head and between his legs, and one, which had originally seized the killing fly, had completely

entangled the fisherman in his own line. The confusion grew momentarily greater, the patter of fins and falling fish forming a babel of sounds that could have been heard a mile distant. Millions of small fry packed the water so closely that it was with difficulty the colonel forced his way through them as he struggled towards the shore; the great jacks dashing

A JACK-BEAT.

into the school with increasing fury, wild with excitement and seemingly unconscious of their human enemies.

Near the beach for several feet there was a solid mass of small fish, and as the demoralized fisherman neared the shore the jacks had preceded him, and were leaping upon the sands, the pattering of their silvery bodies and the laughter of his companions adding to his amazement and discomfiture.

The turmoil, which at first had been confined to his immediate vicinity, spread rapidly up the beach, until for a quarter of a mile the shore was lined with a jumping mass of frenzied fishes that seemed possessed with an uncontrollable desire to hurl themselves upon the sands. The noise from the strange performance soon attracted other observers: gulls came flying from all quarters of the key, dashing into the throng with wild cries; lumbering pelicans fell heavily, and filled their capacious pouches with the smaller fry, and in turn were nipped and then jerked below by the larger

fish. As the gulls rose, the watchful man-ofwar birds gave chase; and so this curious phase of life continued, finally ceasing as suddenly as it began.

"That," said the judge to the astonished colonel, " is a 'jack-beat.' I knew this morning when you brought one in that they had come. They appear by thousands, I might say millions, rushing out of the channel without warning, chasing large schools of sardines inshore, hemming them in against the beach, and devouring them by the score, and, as you have seen, completely oblivious of danger. From now," continued the judge, "for a month or more, these beats will be of daily occurrence. You can hear a heavy one two miles away."

The minor fishes of the reef that afford fine sport and are excellent food for the table are legion. In the deep waters off the great fringing reef, among the waving lilac, the yellow-tail is found, attaining the size of the weak-fish of the North; for them crawfish bait is used, and in deeper waters the white meat of the great Strombus gigas. The lines for all these fishes of deep water are rigged with the hook a foot or more above the sinker, according to the bottom- a method necessary to prevent fouling with the great heads of coral and other forms that cover the areas of this ocean garden.

Various species of the genus Hamulon, or grunts, afford fair sport in shallow water, while the cod of northern

waters is here replaced by the widemouthed grouper, which forms an important article with the Havana trade. The angel and parrot-fishes, with many-hued garb, the sombercolored porgy, the grotesque hogfish, and many more, lend variety and excitement to even the generally doubtful pleasures of deep-water fishing.

The hogfish, usually found in comparatively deep water, was caught by the sportsmen off the great reef at low tide. The dead coral heads, which had been beaten into a wall and formed the hiding-places of innumerable living forms, were partly bare, the water deepening suddenly to the blue depths of the Gulf. Standing on this vantage-ground, bearing the crawfish bait and extra tackle, with the dinghy hauled up in smooth water on the inner side, the fishermen easily threw beyond the gentle breakers into deep water, tenanted with a score of eager fishes whose savage attacks upon the luscious bait only served to draw the greater game. The bite of the hogfish was a steady strain; but the moment the hook was felt it

became a game-fish worthy of the best efforts of the fisherman. Often were our sportsmen forced amid the breakers in their attempts to drag the highly colored and harlequin-like creature from its home into the still waters of the inner reef. With its enormous mouth the fish has a peculiarly swine-like appearance, fully redeemed, however, by its rich coloring and the long and richly cut dorsal fins and tail. It ranks next to the snapper as a table-fish.

Besides these legitimate features of the reef, there are others whose appearance is not always a cause of congratulation. An enormous fish, locally called the Jew, resembling the lophius, is often brought up, threatening to engulf the boat in its capacious maw. A gamy fish seizes the line, and the expectant fisherman finally jerks aboard a veritable porcupine, which rapidly increases in size, assuming gigantic proportions in its inflation. This hedgehog

of the sea is the Paradiodon hystrix, and when a specimen two feet in length has assumed rotund and aldermanic proportions, rolling about the deck like a ball, the victim is often at a loss as to the proper method of removing the encumbrance. Again, the great spotted moray essays the line, fights gamily, is taken for a snapper, and, finally, when hauled into the boat, with open jaws rushes at its captor, who, in one instance, demoralized by the suddenness of the attack, took to the mast, leaving the boat in the possession of the belligerent seaserpent, which ultimately wriggled its way back to its native element.

Withal, the keys of southern Florida offer many inducements and a comparatively new field to the fishermen who care to match their skill with the hand-liners and grainsmen of the outer reef. C. F. Holder.

Go

Robert Underwood Johnson.

N its best sense, society is born, not made. A crowd of well-dressed people is not necessarily a society. They may meet and disperse with no other bond of union than a fine house and lavish hospitality can give. It may be an assembly without unity, flavor, or influence. In the social chaos that followed the Revolution, this truth found a practical illustration. The old circles were scattered. The old distinctions were virtually destroyed, so far as edicts can destroy that which lies in the essence of things. A few who held honored names were left, or had returned from a long exile, to find themselves bereft of rank, fortune, and friends, but these had small disposition to form new associations, and few points of contact with the Arrows who had mounted upon the ruins of the order. The new society was composed largely of these parvenus, who were ambitious for a position and a life of which they had neither the spirit, the taste, the habits, nor the mellowing traditions. Naturally they mistook the gilded frame for the picture. Unfamiliar with the gentle manners, the delicate sense of honor, and the chivalrous instincts, which underlie the best social life, though not always illustrated by its individual members, they were absorbed in matters of etiquette of which they were uncertain, and exacting of non-essentials. They regarded society upon its commercial side, contended over questions of precedence, and, as one of the most observing of their contemporaries has expressed it," bargained for a Courtesy and counted visits." "I have seen quarrels in the imperial court," she adds, "over a visit more or less long, more or less deterred." Perhaps it is to be considered that in a new order which has many aggressive

elements, this balancing of courtesies is not without a certain raison d'être as a protection against serious inroads upon time and hospitality; but the fault lies behind all this, in the lack of that subtle social sense which makes the discussion of these things superfluous, not to say impossible.

It was the wish of Napoleon to reconstruct a society that should rival in brilliancy the old. courts. With this view he called to his aid a few women whose name, position, education, and reputation for esprit and fine manners he thought a sufficient guarantee of success. But he soon learned that it could not be commanded at will. The reply of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, who has left us so many pleasant reminiscences of this period, in which she was an actor as well as an observer, was very apt.

"You can do all that I wish," he said to her; "you are all young and almost all pretty; ah, well! a young and pretty woman can do anything she likes."

"Sire, what your Majesty says may be true," she replied, "but only to a certain point. . . . If the Emperor, instead of his guard and his good soldiers, had only conscripts who would recoil under fire, he could not win great battles like that of Austerlitz. Nevertheless, he is the first general in the world."

But this social life had a personal end. It was to furnish an added instrument of power to the autocrat who ruled. It was to reflect always and everywhere the glory of Napoleon. The period which saw its cleverest woman in hopeless exile, and its most beautiful one under a similar ban for the crime of being her friend, was not one which favored intellectual supremacy. The empire did not encourage literature, it silenced philosophy, and oppressed the talent that did not glorify itself. Its blighting touch rested upon the whole social fabric. The finer elements which, to some extent, entered into it, were lost in the glare of display and pretension. The true spirit of conversation was limited to private coteries that