A N IN TER CEP TED L E TTER. 1 8 1 



morning, and, if looks would hang them, I would not give 

 much for their lives. C, who is more disreputable in 

 appearance than the rest, is the centre of attraction, for 

 he is weighing each horrid little trout on the scales, and 

 there is great excitement as to the number of ounces 

 shown. I think fishing develops, as much as anything 

 else, the envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness of 

 the human mind ! If a man happens to have caught the 

 biggest fish that day, he has no modest scruples whatever, 

 but announces the fact from the house-tops. 



Ah ! my dear ! the pleasures of fishing are like the 

 prospect spoken of by the Irishman — " No fellow can 

 describe it but him who has seen it, and he can't ! " 



I will draw a veil over the supper, where they ate as if 

 they had not had a meal for a week, and talked as if their 

 lungs were iron, and their throats brass. They disputed 

 about the particular inch in seven miles of water where 

 they " rose that big chap ;" and their whole conversation 

 was a confused Babel of "rises," "bites," "trolling," and 

 " flies." Amidst " confusion worse confounded," I regis- 

 tered a mental vow that never, no! never! under any 

 circumstances whatever, would I set foot again in Scot- 

 land bound solely on a fishing expedition. 



And after this experience oi one day s fishing, from my 

 point of view, can you wonder that after three weeks of 

 precisely similar days, I consider the Sportsman^s Gnide 

 to be the most idiotic and the feeblest book ever written, 

 and Scotland the most detestable word in the English 

 lancruacfe! * '" * 



