PERCH-FISHING 63 
there was no need to wait long. Ona July evening such as 
this, with a clear sky overhead and the sun behind the trees, 
if there were fish in the quarter they would not refuse to do 
business. 
The cork floats motionless at first, then behold ! it begins to 
twinkle, sending tiny, circular ripples across the surface. 
“Yonder him!” cries the old gamekeeper, whom the boy 
beside him regards as omniscient in all things pertaining to the 
craft of fishing and obeys his lightest word. ‘ Yonder him! 
canny noo! Canny! bide still a wee, till he gets it in his 
thrapple.”” The young angler complies with the utmost difficulty, 
his little arms twitching with eagerness to tighten on his prey. 
The twinkling of the cork ceases—the fish has gone! No, it 
twinkles again, then bobs, and twinkles again. Now it begins 
to slide through the water, still twinkling, sinking deeper, until 
—oh, moment of ecstasy !—it goes under altogether and is seen 
getting dimmer in the depths. ‘Out wi’ him noo ! ” cries the 
Mentor, and immediately the pupil exerts all his strength ; it is 
well it is not greater, else something must give way. After 
a struggle of a second or two, up flies into the air a perch 
of three-quarters of a pound, and by the elder angler’s directing 
hand is brought safely into the boat. What a beauty! How 
rich the velvety green of back and sides, set off by symmetrical 
darker stripes! How brilliant shine the carmine fins against 
the pearl-white belly! Woe is me! Why is it that as one 
approaches maturity, or, if candour be the order of the day, 
at a period considerably on the wrong side of maturity, one 
cannot view such a fish with the same rapturous admiration 
that stirred the lad of less than a dozen summers? Why does 
the first twinkle of the floating cork no longer set his pulses 
flying and his heart beating to the same wild measure that once 
thrilled him through and through? Why, in short, does one grow 
old and cold, and, straining to the last after the unattainable, 
cease to prize that which once composed unspeakable delight? 
Atall events memory is a blessed possession, and one still has the 
