SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 183 



he could "speecify" that he had no had muckle luck, 

 made the practical retort to his southern interlocutor 

 of producing a couple of seemingly interminable salmon 

 from the bag that had been half-concealed behind 

 his broad shoulders. That is the sort of irritating 

 adventure that may happen to you, to the latest day 

 of your life. Luck, of course, may always have much 

 to do with success, and you try to lay that soothing 

 unction to your vanity. Moreover, a local man must 

 know his native water, and be more familiar with the 

 flies, and all the rest of it. Nevertheless, there is no 

 getting over the fact that both luck and skill must be 

 handicapped by his clumsy apparatus, and that if your 

 indifferently equipped acquaintance has fairly beaten 

 you, it has been in spite of his having been heavily 

 overweighted in that respect. And talking of equip- 

 ment, one thing strikes us in these pictures in Scrope. 

 A better sportsman never lived, yet he is got up in 

 costume that would stamp a man now as the most 

 unmistakable of Cockneys. He fishes the Tweed in a 

 curly-brimmed beaver, in a flowing frock-coat and 

 gracefully-cut white pantaloons descending on highly 

 polished single-soled boots in a dress, in short, which 

 would have become a man who was no great dandy 

 as he took his stroll along the shady side of Pall Mall. 

 We must say that in dressing for our field-sports we 

 are become wiser in our generation ; and that coarse 

 home-spun jackets and baggy knickerbockers, deer- 

 stalking wide-awake, and hobnailed boots, are more 

 graceful u in that connection," as they are undoubtedly 



