It cannot be expected that a brief sojourn in this State will work any marvellous cure.  Herein lies one of the principal difficulties.  A patient comes to Minnesota, and, having heard much of its power to restore the enfeebled, expects to become strong and well within a few days.  They should disabuse their minds of this error before they start from home.  The process of restoration with the consumptive is slow, as a rule, though some recover, it is true, very rapidly, yet with the most a year is as little time as can reasonably be expected for climate and exercise to complete a cure.  It is better, if the climate is found to agree, to make the State a permanent home.  A return to the old climate and occupation in which the disease originated is only to court its reappearance.

Lake Minnetonka, the place first above mentioned, is, however, the point for both pleasure-seekers and invalids who are well enough to “rough it.”  An hour’s ride from St. Paul brings you to this, the most lovely of all the lakes in the State, to our thinking.  It is really a series of lakes, all bounded by irregular shores; while, in places, occur deep bays and inlets, giving picturesqueness and beauty beyond all ordinary fancyings.

Near the railway station are two hotels (the furthest being the best), where good fare, and at reasonable rates, can be had, with row-boats thrown in, ad libitum.  This lake is one of the pleasure resorts for the people of both St. Paul and Minneapolis.  Excursion tickets are sold for every train running thither, and many go up simply to enjoy a day’s fishing and sailing.

There is a little steamer running from near the railway station, which is close to the edge of the lake, to the village of Excelsior, six miles distant, near which lives one of the best guides to the fishing grounds of the lake.  But a guide is not at all essential to the amateur, or those in simple quest of fun, pleasure, or health, since the fish here are so plentiful that all will have luck, whether they have experience or not.

Near “Round Island,” and off “Spirit Knob,” in this lake, are favorite haunts of the fish, yet the “big ones” are not plentiful now at these points, though their resorts are well known to most of the old fishermen.

To tell of the size and abundance of the fish here will, perhaps, court disbelief; yet we state “what we know,” when we say that a single fisherman starting, with the “guide” before referred to, at eight o’clock in the morning, came to the wharf at noon—­after rowing a distance of six miles to make port—­with a catch of about one hundred weight of fish, chiefly pickerel, one of which weighed twelve pounds, and measured near three feet in length.  Another and less successful party of two, instead of catching a “big one,” came near being caught by him.  It was a funny incident altogether.  They were from “down east,” where pickerel don’t weigh over a pound or so, on the average, unless fed on shot