A Son of the City | Page 5

of bread
and jam contentedly. Silvey read the name on the boat's stern with
interest.
"Detroit," he gasped. "Gee, Fletch, don't you wish you had a boat like
that with all the gasoline to run her?"
John's brown eyes grew dreamy. "Just don't you, though! We could ride
down the canal out in the Illinois River and down the Mississippi to St.
Louis. No staying after school, no 'rithmetic lessons, no lawns to cut or
front porches to wash on Saturdays. We'd get up when we liked and
fish when we liked, and loaf around all day. If money ran out, we'd find
a place where there wasn't any bridge, and ferry people across the river
for a nickel or a dime, or whatever they charge down there. Maybe, too,
we could get a lot of red neckties and shirts with brown and yellow
stripes and sell 'em to the darkies for a dollar apiece. Sid DuPree says
they buy those things and he ought to know. He spent summer before
last down South with his ma!"
"Where'd we get the money to buy 'em in the first place?" asked the
practical Silvey.
His chum's face clouded. "Shucks, Sil, you're always spoiling things.
But," more hopefully, "we needn't really worry about money anyway.
All the books I've read about the South tell how kind folks are down
there, and how they won't allow a stranger to go hungry, not even if
they have to give him their last hunk of cornbread. So if ferrying didn't
pay, all we'd have to do would be to land, walk up to the nearest house,
and knock at the door. When the big mammy cook--they always have
'em in the books--came to the door, we'd just look at her and say, 'We're
hungry.'"
Silvey nodded, content to revel in the glories of the daydream which
John's more vivid imagination was spinning.

"We'd go all the way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Maybe
we'd catch some alligators to make things exciting, and maybe some
big yellow river catfish. I read about one once that was six feet long.
And when we arrived, they'd put our pictures in the newspapers, with a
big lot of print after them, just the way they do when someone comes to
town here who's done something. We'd win a lot of race cups, and folks
would say to their friends, 'See those two kids there? They took a
launch all the way down the river from Lake Michigan by themselves.'
We'd be it all the time we were there."
Silvey, under the spell of the alluring picture, let his gaze roam
dreamily around until it lighted upon an excited group down the pier.
He sprang to his feet energetically.
"Fletch! Look! A man drowned, maybe. Come on quick!" Such alluring
possibilities may come true in a city.
They sprinted up to the rapidly increasing crowd, and wriggled, boylike,
past obstructing arms and between tense bodies until they found
themselves in the inner line of the circle. A carp of a size sufficient to
excite the envy of the neighboring fishermen lay with laboring gills
upon the water-spattered planking. The lads gazed in open-mouthed
admiration at the large, glistening scales, the staring eyes, and the
twitching, murky red fins.
"Weighs five pounds if he's an ounce," orated the proud captor. "Says I
to myself when he bit, 'I've got a bird there,' and I was right."
John turned to his chum with the inevitable question:
"Gee, don't you wish we could catch a fish like that?"
And Silvey made the inevitable reply:
"Just don't you, though!"
They watched breathlessly as the fisherman forced his stringer between
the large gills and out through the gaping mouth, and tied it in a secure

double knot that there might be no danger of an escape. As the
rebellious captive was lowered into the water, and the throng about the
spot began to thin, the successful angler seated himself again.
"What'd you catch him on?" John broke out.
"Taters."
"Do big fellows like that bite on potatoes?"
They were assured that such was the case.
"Say," John scratched nervously at a knot in a pier plank as he
summoned courage for his request. "Give me a hunk, will you? I never
caught a fish that big in my life and I sure want to!"
"Catch." The man's eyes flashed in amusement as he opened a deep
cigar box and tossed out a half-boiled tuber.
For a second time that morning, the boys tested a new type of bait.
Hoping to change his luck, John cast far out to the very limit of the ten
cents' worth of fishing line on his reel and sat, tensely hopeful, for five
dragging minutes. Then he jammed the pole into