THE OXEYE'S VOCABULARY 



storm of hisses with which the titmice troop greet 

 the approach of a hawk. The anger or terror, or 

 both combined, of the small birds is very soon 

 over. The hawk strikes down a titmouse, or passes 

 off baulked, and the titmice instantly forget all 

 about it, and go on sliding and flittering from twig 

 to twig, thoughtless of further danger. 



The Angling Hamlet 



Time out of mind the trout season for the two 

 exquisite waters that wind through the marsh began 

 of old at the middle of March. So one pictures 

 the old school of anglers, when the ancient inn 

 stood on the site of the present, coming hither on 

 the evening of the fourteenth. They were keen 

 without doubt as the keenest to-day. How one 

 would like to see them getting out and fixing up 

 to-morrow those long, fine tapering rods, and hear 

 them hold forth on fancy flies, flies that never were 

 on earth or sky save on the fisher's cast. Unhappily 

 no record was kept of these anglers, the dates of 

 their coming and going. The old inn or the old 

 water-keeper if there were a water-keeper handed 

 down no little book such as that which in faded 

 ink tells us the names and dates of those who fished 

 the Bakewell and Rowsley meads in the famous 

 May-fly years. Could the old angler come back 

 to Paradise, he would find a hard heir indeed 

 in his old haunts, and his right to fish, in his old 



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