46 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



I take, therefore, the introduction to worm fishing, published in my 

 "Book on Angling:" 



"I know nothing more pleasant than wandering dreamily away up 

 amongst the hills by the side of some tiny beck new to the angler, with no 

 sound but the pipe of the plover or the curlew, or the distant tinkle of the 

 drowsy bell wether ; no encumbrance but a light rod ; no bother about what 

 flies will or wUl not suit ; no tackle beyond a yard of gut and two or three 

 hooks in a piece of brown paper ; a small bag of moss with well-scoured 

 worms within ; a sandwich or a cold mutton chop — the latter for preference 

 — in one pocket, and a flask of the dew " that shines in the starlight 

 when kings dinna ken " in the other. Ear, far beyond all care ; away 

 from rates, taxes, and telegrams ; proofs, publishers, and printers' devUs ; 

 where there are neither division lists, nor law lists, nor stock lists, 

 nor share lists, nor price lists, nor betting lists, nor any list whatever; 

 where no newspaper can come to worry or unsettle you, and where 

 you don't care a straw how the world wags ; where your clients are 

 trouts, your patients worms, your congregation mountain blackfaces, water 

 ousels, and dabchicks ; your court, hospital, or church, the pre-Adamite 

 hnis with the eternal sky above them ; your inspiration the pure breeze of 

 heaven, far, far above all earthly corruption. Here, in delightful solitude, 

 sauntering or scrambling on and on, and on and on, upwards and upwards, 

 from wee poolie to fern-clad cascade, casting or dropping the worm into 

 either, or guiding it deftly under each hollow bank and past each ragged 

 stone, pulling out a trout here and a trout there in the fair summer weather, 

 with now a whifP of wild thyme or fragrant gorse, and now a shaugh of the 

 pipe, and an amazed and charmed gaze at the mountain crags above, and 

 the ever-changing scenery of the hills as the clouds flit over them, with 

 just sport enough to give amusement withoixt enchaining the attention so 

 much as to prevent us drinking in all the delights that nature spreads for 

 us. This is, to my mind, the true delight of angling. This was my first 

 experience — my first angling love — and will be my last. What though you 

 never get a fish over half a pound? Why, the half-pounder is as much 

 the hero of your day as the two-pounder is of your more pretentious friend 

 who spent the day up to his middle in the main river, and never noticed ^ 



