50 A YEAR OF liberty; OR, 



shows not the smallest interest or pleasure in the business neither 

 exults at your success nor commiserates your failure, and pockets his 

 half guinea with a silent touch of his hat and an aspect of being the 

 most ill-used man in Christendom. 



Now look on this picture of rags, hearty interest, indefatigable 

 zeal, and active good humour, all for two shillings a day. If he 

 cannot show you sport (and you may take your corporal oath he has 

 done his best), he will tell you what might, could, would, should, or 

 ought to be done some of it truth, more, probably truth embellished. 

 But with all his failings and poor Pat is only a man after all ^he is 

 the best and pleasantest attendant, through heat or cold, hunger or 

 thirst, in good fortune or evil fortune, that can be found out of his 

 own tight little island. 



With your florin in his hand, he bids ''yer honor the best of 

 sleap," says something hopeful about to-morrow, and with his 

 duddeen in his mouth, and very little under his waistcoat, talks by 

 his bit of smouldering turf for the hour together of what you did, 

 he did, and they did. 



Archy and his mate have been standing this half-hour under the 

 windows with rods and gaff. There, too, is Willie, critically inspect- 

 ing the boat, hammer and bradawl in hand ; one of his eccentricities 

 being a delusion (of course it was a delusion) that all the craft which 

 float on Irish lakes required repairs, and that it was his special mission 

 to execute the same. 



As a station Garrison is perfect, all the best casts being close at 

 hand. No comfort can compensate for want of proximity, and here 

 the one and the other go hand in hand. 



I have little to say about * the waters of the neighbourhood," as 

 they have scarcely any connection with the angler, if we except the 

 river Drowse, the outlet of the lake. 



Loughs Macnean and Melvin stretch along the north-eastern 

 boundary of the county of Leitrim, separating it from Fermanagh, 

 in which, however, they may be said to lie partly. These lakes are 

 connected by the Kilcoo river, and, with Macnean, form the head 

 waters and chief breeding grounds of the district. I never fished 



