FISHES AND FISHING. 29 



father, I did very little more than look at others en- 

 joying it, treasuring up in my own mind everything 

 worth remembering, until I was about ten years of 

 age, when looking in the book-case of an old gentle 

 man, a neighbour, and intimate acquaintance of my 

 family, I found an excellent edition of Walton and 

 Cotton's Angler ; this I borrowed and read, until I 

 had impressed it upon my memory, and having had 

 the present of a solid rod, winch, line, &c., I now 

 and then obtained permission from my father to angle 

 for an hour or two, as a reward for performing an 

 abstruse arithmetical calculation, or making a correct 

 drawing of some geometrical figure, and giving a cor 

 rect calculation of the contents of its area. One day, 

 whilst standing rather insecurely on a narrow piece 

 of planking, I hooked a large fish, and the sudden 

 impetus given to me, caused me to fall over into the 

 river ; the water was rather too deep for me, but the 

 depth only extended a little way. I held on to my 

 rod, and aided by the pulling of the fish, and by my 

 own paddling with one hand, I got on a bank of sand 

 in the middle of the river, where the water was only 

 about two feet deep, and there I stood, and played my 

 fish, which turned out to be a barbel, weighing nearly 

 five pounds. One of my father's men waded off to 

 me, with a bushel-basket in his hand, a common sub 

 stitute at the works for a landing-net ; he carried me 



