To-day, as every hunter knows, moose are plentiful, all through the two-thirds of the State that lies under forest; and not only there, for this very autumn three have been seen in the Tresumpscott woods, while both last year and this, a black bear has spent several weeks in our neighborhood.
Muskrat are found in Tresumpscott Pond and its small tributary streams, hares and partridges and foxes all through its woods. Black duck, and sometimes wood duck, breed about the Pond, and Carolina rails; and where the brooks that feed the Pond spread out into broad estuaries of alder covert, you may see the marked flight of snipe or woodcock.
It was in these woods that Jerome Mitchell, our local authority on game and fur (a very fair naturalist, also), grew up. He is a slender, well-knit fellow, whose mother had great ambitions for him. He walked into town, five miles and back, every day, to get one year in the High School, after his country schooling. He could not afford any more, but when he was seventeen, having picked up a knowledge of taxidermy and simple mechanics, he moved into town. He worked early and late with dogged patience, taking every smallest job that offered, till at last he realized his ambition, and opened a small, but good sportsmen’s and general repair shop. Gradually he picked up the fur trade of the neighborhood. He is anxiously fair, and boys from the farms soon began to bring in skunk, squirrel, and muskrat skins, and every little while a fox or a coon.
Last year Jerome ran into hard luck. A stranger, a good-looking man, brought in an extra fine looking lot of muskrat skins. There were $600 worth, and this was a low figure for them. It was a serious venture, still Jerome took them; they turned out, however, to be stolen goods, and he had to pay the rightful owner, as the stranger was nowhere to be found. Poor Jerome! he was near tears when he told my father about it. Then, when he just had his store new painted and set in order for the summer’s trade, someone dropped a lighted match among the shavings, and the whole stock and fixtures were in a blaze.
This loss turned out to be not so serious. Jerome worked nearly all night for a week, and made better fittings than he had had before. The wholesale dealers were generous, and the shop re-opened with the best outfit of goods that it has had at all.