FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 165 



natural and artificial ; can handle the rod and line 

 more deftly ; and are more fertile in ingenious devices 

 to bring suspicious victims to their lure. Yet such 

 men are often tied fast by professional pursuits, and 

 have seldom carte blanche for fishing in good water. 

 When they do go on a visit to some friend in the 

 country, or get a day's permission in some carefully- 

 preserved stretch of stream, how they do enjoy and 

 make the most of it ! all the more, however, if they 

 are at home in the neighbourhood, and have marked 

 the great fish feeding placidly of an evening on the 

 insects that tumble in from the banks and the tree- 

 roots. 



It is no easy matter anywhere to beguile those sated 

 epicures, and in popular streams that are free for a 

 trifle to all comers, it is the next thing to an impossi- 

 bility. We used to know one particular river trout 

 who went far towards making the fortune of a large 

 hotel in a village some twenty miles from London. 

 It was very much a repetition of Lord Lytton's story 

 of John Burley and his one-eyed perch in " My Novel." 

 True, the situation of the hotel was charming ; with a 

 mighty horse-chestnut before the door, coming out 

 towards the middle of spring in a flush of pink and 

 white blossom, and overhanging a picturesque old 

 bridge, and a strip of miniature meadow enamelled 

 with cowslips. But the most generous patrons of the 

 establishment, of a Sunday, were the admirers of that 

 corpulent trout whose fame had spread far and near. 

 The good genius of the flourishing house, he was 



