THE MICROBE 



we ran one of those agonising sprints that most of us 

 have had occasionally to suffer at one time or another. 

 Doubtless our party by painting the tragedy of the 

 situation, melted the heart of the stationmaster, or 

 possibly even oiled his palm. But at any rate we arrived 

 in time and fell panting and breathless, rod and all, into 

 the laps of our most indignant seniors. I am afraid that 

 this here veraciously narrated incident was told with 

 growing improvements, in the circle to which we both 

 belonged, for many a long year afterwards. Indeed, 

 I have listened to it oftentimes myself, how we raced 

 a slow Swiss train, caught it up in full career, and were 

 dragged through the window ; and for myself, I almost 

 came to believe in these, its heroic features. But at 

 the time far from being heroes we were in considerable 

 disgrace with the rest of the party for our quite un- 

 pardonable absent-mindedness. 



A dull, cheerless, showery day at Chur, where some 

 small, attenuated, blue-looking boiled trout, served 

 cold, had aroused my curiosity and also contempt from 

 a culinary point of view, sent me out scouring the 

 country, rod in hand. The first mountains of six 

 thousand feet or so I had ever seen towered im- 

 mediately above, I remember, and impressed me 

 mightily. A mile or two away I came upon the 

 upper Rhine, a big stream sprawling just here over a 

 broad, shallow, stony bed. Having, as already noted, 

 the sentiment of topography strong within me, I 

 burned to record the capture of one trout at least in 

 the famous river. I succeeded just so far, wading into 

 cold, half blue, half milky-looking shallows and killing 

 one miserable specimen after the pattern of those 



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