XIV PLAN OF THE WORK* 



a beardie, (the loach or stone-roach of the south,) I 

 hooked a large trout ; owing no doubt to the muddi- 

 ness of the water, for as yet I could know little of the 

 guiles of the art, in not scaring the fish. My " yarn 

 thread" was strong enough to twitch out the trout to 

 the green bank where I stoojl; but the bank itself 

 unfortunately sloped down to the water's edge, and 

 my bent pin having no barb to take a firm hold, the 

 trout slipped off, spanged down the bank, and in an in- 

 stant, to my unutterable grief, was lost in the dark water. 



Disappointment is the mother of wisdom : I never 

 angled with a bent pin again; but many a good 

 hook I lost among the roots and stones at the identical 

 spot where I had, as I may say, pinned my first trout, 

 and where I supposed, in the simplicity of my inex- 

 perience, that all the trouts in the river must un- 

 doubtedly lie, ready to be hooked, though I never again 

 succeeded in discovering one of them there. 



So far as an on-looker and a child could learn, how- 

 ever, I had good opportunities of seeing the practice 

 both of fly and minnow-fishing, and that these engrossed 

 more of my attention than I can now recollect, would 

 appear from the circumstance, that when I was about 

 four or five years old, I hovered in the rear of the fly- 

 fishers till I got hooked myself, and the fly-hook barb 

 holding faster than my bent pin , it was with no little 

 difficulty and some pain that it was disengaged from 

 my ear. As I grew older, my passion for trout-fishing 

 absorbed many of my thoughts and much of my time, 

 but far from unprofitably, independent altogether of the 

 trouts caught ; for I have no doubt that this has had great 

 influence on my pursuits and studies up to the present 



