LE ROI S'AMUSE

It is a sad day for the American brook trout when President Coolidge takes himself and his retinue on a vacation. Equipped with hip boots and a fishin pole, and carrying a can of real bait--garden-worms of the common squirming variety--the Chief Executive descends on a stream in the Adriondacks or the Black Hills, and fills the Presidential breakfast table each day with the products of his own quiet skill in sport.

Mr. Coolidge should be an adept at the game of baiting, since so much of his time passes in watching and ignoring the lines thrown out by an army of baiters who spend their energies in endeavoring to get a rise out of him. An adept in the game of political angling, both as baiter and baited, finds a real recreation in dealing with a tribe whose wiles are of a more subtle order. The landing of a brook trout gives infinitely deeper satisfaction than the discomfiture of a poor political fish or fisherman. Further, there can be little doubt that the a worm are far more palatable than the big fish in the governmental swim.

"Study to be quiet" was Izaak Walton's grand old fishing axion, and if there was ever a disciple of this school, the President is such a one. In that study he has perfected himself, and his competence has stood him in good stead, as much in dodging the lures of his baiters as in filling each day the larder of the White House in South Dakota.