THE OTTER KILLER. 27 



that this rich assemblage did not possess a fly of the value 

 of one farthing. I fear his verdict was a true one ; I have 

 tried two days consecutively and never hooked a fish. But 

 no, the water was too low, the wind too high, or something 

 was amiss, for I have the best flies procurable in the best shop 

 in London. 



The storm terminated as summer gales do, in a heavy fall 

 of rain. Although the wears are raised to intercept the 

 passage of the fish from the sea, the late freshes, joined to a 

 spring tide, have enabled both trout and salmon to overleap 

 the barrier and fill the pools above it. Want of success had 

 damped my ardour for piscation ; and besides, I had involved 

 myself in a most amusing article in Blackwood, and felt an 

 unwillingness to lay aside the book. At this moment of 

 indecision, old Antony the otter-killer, one of that numerous 

 and nondescript personages who locate themselves in the 

 houses of the Irish gentry, passed the window with a fine 

 salmon and a brace of trout sixteen inches long. How fresh 

 and sparkling is the phosphoric shading of the scales, as the 

 old man turns them round for my inspection ! What a beau- 

 tiful fish ! it barely measures thirty inches, and is fully 

 ten pounds weight ! That short and deep- shouldered 

 Mddawn* is worth all the lubberly roach, dace, perch, and 

 gudgeons, that the Thames contains from its source to its 

 debouchement. 



I looked after the ancient otter-hunter with envy. How 

 lowly would he be estimated in the eyes of a Cheapside 

 fisherman ; one, who wears a modest-coloured jacket,f lest 

 a showy garment might annoy the plethoric animals he is 

 dabbling for, whose white basket is constructed of the 

 finest wicker work with rods and reels, floats and flies, 

 pastes and patties, lines and liqueurs sufficient to load a 

 donkey, how contemptuously would he look down upon 

 honest Antony ! Figure to yourself a little feeble man, dressed 



* A salmon. 



t " Our forefathers were wont to pursue even their amusements with 

 great formality : an angler, a century and a half back, must have his 

 fishing-coat, which, if not black, must at least be of a very dark colour, a 

 black velvet cap, like those which jockeys now wear, and a rod with a 

 stock like a halberd ; thus equipped, he stalked forth, followed by the 

 eyes of a whole neighbourhood." Daniel 



