142 IN MEMORIAM. 



After a while our conversation turned upon the subject 

 of rods, my companion remarking that the one which he 

 had with him was purchased a long time ago from a young 

 man who was leaving England ; he also mentioned that it 

 had a peculiarity which he had never before witnessed in a 

 fly rod, viz., that the joints screwed into their respective 

 ferrules. I immediately asked him where the young man 

 had lived, and on hearing that it was at Ripon, I felt sure 

 that both the rod and its former owner were old acquain- 

 tances of mine. On the gentleman taking it from its case 

 and showing it to me, my surmise proved correct, it had 

 formerly been the property of a cousin of mine, and who 

 now, poor fellow, was lying in a foreign grave. 



What a flood of recollections the sight of that old fly-rod 

 called up to my mind ; the remembrances of scores of happy 

 days that I had spent with its owner in days gone by, and 

 which now could never be recalled. Soon after my com- 

 panion alighted, leaving me alone ; I therefore fell into a 

 kind of dreamy reverie, the subject of my thoughts being 

 the incident just related ; but of all the shifting scenes con- 

 nected with my dead cousin's life that flitted through my 

 mind in quick succession, I think the following three were 

 most indelibly impressed upon it. 



A bright, sunny 'afternoon in April, the air resounding 

 with the shouts of a troop of happy schoolboys issuing from 

 the doors of a large boys' school, situate in a cathedral town 

 of Yorkshire. Apart from the others are two lads hurry- 

 ing towards a trout stream which flowed at no great dis- 

 tance. One of them, your humble servant, the other a 

 straight, active fellow, a few years my elder, my cousin, 

 alluded to above. He was a perfect enthusiast in the gentle 

 art, pursuing it in every branch, dressing all his own flies, 

 and getting dishes of trout and grayling when no one else 

 could do anything. Every half-holiday was he to be found 

 by the river side, and on this occasion, eager to imbue me 



