io AN OPEN CREEL 



very proud. Once, too, I assisted, as spectator, in a 

 great draught of salmon, seventy or eighty of them in 

 the net all at once. I approved of the proceedings 

 when the fishermen leaped into the shallow water 

 and began to lay about them with their clubs ; but 

 otherwise I was not much interested in salmon. 

 Poddlers were my fancy. They caused me to refuse 

 to go to Edinburgh, Melrose, and other objects of 

 family pilgrimage ; they made me think and speak 

 slightingly of the Whitadder, whither I was lured one 

 day by false promises of trout ; they filled me with a 

 hatred for a certain person which I have hardly got 

 over yet. He was about my own age, and he carried 

 two immense ones on a string. And he refused for 

 them three-halfpence, and a pocket-knife, and a hook ! 

 Poddlers, in fact, were the important part of Berwick- 

 on-Tweed. They were Berwick-on-Tweed. 



Some matters are there which it were well to touch 

 on but lightly my first catch of jack, for instance, 

 made with a Devon minnow in April ! A severe 

 reproof by a stranger as I walked home displaying 

 them in triumph gave me my first idea of what the 

 close season meant. Other memories, however, are 

 legitimate enough and very delightful. I fear I should 

 not now find fair a certain small stream, branch of an 

 important river, which of old gave me much thrilling 

 sport, but in those days it was as a river of Eden. 

 Somewhere in the background of recollection is a 

 consciousness that its bottom was principally com- 

 posed of tin cans, bottles, and other contributions from 

 a neighbouring small town ; some faint echo of a 

 whisper seems to remind me that the same small town 



