THE FASCINATION OF IT 21 



He stood a good 6 ft. 2 in. and was a fine 

 specimen of an angler. 



If fishing were much indulged in before the 

 war, it came to be additionally attractive when 

 the war had begun, and after it was over. It 

 brought rest to tired, jaded nerves, and its sooth- 

 ing properties and healing powers were very 

 valuable to the convalescent. The Times news- 

 paper, under the then editorship of Mr. Geoffrey 

 Dawson (better remembered in South Africa by 

 his former name of Mr. Geoffrey Robinson, 

 private secretary to the High Commissioner, 

 Lord Milner ; and afterwards editor of the Star, 

 Johannesburg), started a thoughtful, kindly 

 scheme. This journal got into touch with a 

 number of riparian owners, and made out a list 

 of those who would give permission for wounded 

 officers to fish in their private waters. Many a 

 man was thus enabled to regain health and renew 

 strength in the pleasant places of the land. 

 " There is nothing," as Dr. Henry Van Dyke 

 declares, " that attracts human nature more 

 powerfully than the sport of tempting the un- 

 known with a fishing line." And I think there 

 is nothing that proves of greater value to human 

 nature exhausted by the stresses of war. 



A large part of the attractiveness of fishing 

 consists in the brotherly love that is associated 

 with it. It is perhaps true that an angler will 

 not too readily divulge the secret of the fly on 

 which he got his big basket of trout to other 

 anglers who are fishing the same waters, And 



