236 ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



the tenement where our festive meetings were wont 

 to be held begins to show symptons of disrepair. Its 

 kirtle gay of briars and woodbines now hangs about it 

 in careless shreds the thatch has been partly torn 

 away, while what remains thereof is furred over with 

 wind-sown mosses ; there is a huge fissure from base 

 to chimney-top at one end of the building, and several 

 great stones are commencing their escape outward 

 above the porch. Its diamond-shaped panes, more- 

 over, are many of them supplanted by patches of 

 vellum abstractions, probably, from some ancient 

 manuscript formerly possessed by our club, and left, 

 unthought of, to the spoiler's mutilating hand. 



Ah ! and our hostess too our mirth-loving, kind- 

 hearted landlady, is no longer to be seen. A stranger 

 fills, her place. The tones of sweet humour and 

 benevolence which circled below her hospitable roof 

 are exchanged for the austere brawlings of a drunken 

 publican. There is a sign-board also, swinging aloof 

 over the door-way, with the likeness of a fish pictured 

 upon it surely not that of a salmon a creature set 

 and proportioned so singularly never cleft the flood ; 

 it seems a compound of the tench and the tad-pole, 

 and is coloured over with a sloughy, blue mixture, such 

 as might be formed from the cleanings of some well- 



