Out of the Chalk. 85 



There are several gentlemen who never failed to appear 

 regularly at Farningham on the eve of many successive 

 Good Fridays, and the veteran tragedian Mr. Phelps was 

 one of these, recognized always as an eminent actor, but 

 also as a masterly killer of trout. In the very early morning 

 or late evening there is generally a heavy trout to be picked 

 out immediately under the spreading chestnut tree, for the 

 plump fish in the millstream, in spite of the keeper and the 

 notice-board, drop down from under the bridge to feed on 

 the shallows, and may be communicated with if no person 

 has passed along the brink before the fisherman's arrival. 

 The first labourer crossing the bridge to his field-work will 

 frighten all the fish, and before his heavy boots have ceased 

 their ponderous thud you will have noticed the clear water 

 ploughed in four or five different places by prowling truants 

 scuttling home to the cool retirement of the dark arches and 

 the protection of the notice-board. 



As, year in and year out, time out of mind, this Anglers' 

 Carnival has been held on Good Friday, a word or two 

 more may be permitted respecting it. The event is not 

 advertised or placarded to the world, nor proclaimed from 

 the housetops ; no special trains are laid on to the scene of 

 action ; but it is a momentous event, for all that, to a select 

 company of the Waltonian brotherhood, to say nothing of 

 the fish, who, one may reasonably suppose, are very 

 material parties to the affair. This year (1875) proved no 

 exception to the time-honoured custom. On this particular 

 day, early in the spring though it happened to be, the 

 trouting season commenced in the semi-free reaches of the 

 Darent. You have, let it be said at once, very little chance 

 indeed of introducing your hook-maker to a trout unless you 

 repair to Farningham over night. Just as it is the early 

 bird which picketh up the worm, so it is the early angler 



