FISH OUT OF WATER. 



BY CRABSTICK. 



WAS, one May, spending the week I have 

 hitherto been fortunate enough to get for the 

 spring fishing, at Crook, by the Tweed, with three 

 old friends — Selborne, Dunn, and Black. We were, except 

 Selborne, hard-working anglers, doing our work with 

 a will, and giving as good an account of ourselves at the 

 day's end as here and there one. Selborne we chaff, and 

 say he is lazy, though we know that is not the word that 

 describes him, for when we return at night, with baskets 

 laden as best we have been able to load them, has he an 

 empty creel ? How many a botanic prize, that our 

 otherwise-occupied eyes have overlooked, does he not haul 

 admiringly forth! How many winged creatures, that have 

 been invisible to us, do his bottles not contain ! How 

 many pebbles, in which his eye sees beauties unknown to 

 us, as his tongue recounts them in language to which we 

 know no approach, has he not brought home! How 

 many birds has he not observed, how many animals 

 watched ? Nay, how many things Selborne has done that 

 we have not done, let us no further enquire. I only know 

 that at night, though his creel is the lightest, his heart is 

 probably the happiest, and his head the wisest. 



