SALMON FISHING 



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correction ; therefore anyone seeing the first statement, and 

 failing to notice the correction, would rest convinced that the 

 stretch of water on which the great score was reported to be 

 made was of far greater money value than it really was. 

 Whilst writing of mistakes made in sending wires, we cannot 

 refrain from relating a somewhat costly one that occurred 

 to ourselves. On the morning of the day that Zoedone won 

 the Grand National Steeplechase at Liverpool, we wired from 

 a Scotch village to a London commissioner : " Zoedone, ten 

 pounds to win," which we handed to a red - haired Scotch 

 lassie before starting out to fish. On returning, we were 

 glad, indeed, to learn we had won a hundred and twenty 

 pounds, and duly sent off a request, asking that our cheque 

 should be sent to the north on the Monday following. The 

 reply to this was a letter, stating our wire had been received, 

 but minus the word " Zoedone " ; so nothing had been done ! 

 Then the father of the red-haired lassie, who was our gillie, 

 was at once sent to the Post Office to ask for an explana- 

 tion, and returned to tell us: " Weel, sir, she thocht the word 

 was something indeecent, and so she joost left it oot " ; and 

 dearly as the stupid mistake had cost us, it was impossible 

 to help laughing. We remember, in the spring of 1884 or 

 1885, Land and Water credited the author and two of his 

 friends with a catch of about a hundred spring fish more than 

 they had taken in the month. On demanding, instead of 

 humbly pleading for, a correction of the damaging misstate- 

 ments, the editor curtly refused to alter his published returns ; 

 a decision he adhered to, although the author's fish -book, 

 kept day by day, with letters from each of his friends, 

 with extracts from their "logs" absolutely contradicting the 

 published accounts, were all laid before him ! As one of our 

 friends was his own landlord, while the other had a long lease 

 of his fishing, and we ourselves were giving up ours, the matter 

 was not considered worth further powder and shot. Later 

 on, we ascertained the gasconading reporter was a bank clerk 

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