160 THE TROUT ARE RISING 



with me ! " said he. The man who had safely 

 steered the lad along was touched by the railway- 

 man's human kindness, and just as the lad was 

 being put into the train, he said, " Thank you 

 very much, indeed ! " Whereupon the patient 

 turned round, and with an old-world courtesy, said 

 to his original rescuer : " Ye're verra welcome ! " 

 Fishing lends itself peculiarly to the kindly 

 grace of humour. There is a special type of 

 angling joke. The " Come inside ! " of Punch is, 

 of course, a classic a classic with honour in its 

 own country, moreover. As a guest at the Fly 

 Fishers' Club in Piccadilly the other day, when 

 looking round those wonderful walls, I caught 

 sight of the old familiar illustration and text, duly 

 framed. There is a pleasant anecdote (its printed 

 source unknown to me) of an angler, engaged 

 with his third bottle of beer, remarking, "There 

 is this to be said about fishing : it does keep a 

 man out of the public-houses." In the Trans- 

 vaal two men were bottom-fishing for yellow fish. 

 One said he liked his friend's float, with its ver- 

 milion tip. It looked cheerful in the landscape. 

 His friend replied : " It looks much more cheerful 

 when you cannot see it at all ! " Once, when I 

 was fly-fishing in South Africa in company with a 

 Natal policeman, it came on to rain hard and we 

 were both nearly drenched. " Anyhow," I said, 

 " it will do good for the farmers ! " " Yes, but 

 I'm not a farmer ! " quoth he. The humorist 

 who takes to rod and line generally gets going. 

 I remember one, on being told to throw in some 



