Hlcjanfccr IRusscl 547 



chances of success which suffice to tempt men away 

 from their business and their families to some of our 

 salmon-streams, yet those who have most often felt 

 and seen the hopelessness of the undertaking, are just 

 those who are most eager to try it again. Look at that 

 otherwise sensible and respectable person, standing mid- 

 way in the gelid Tweed (it is early spring or latest 

 autumn, the only seasons when there is now much 

 chance), his shoulders aching, his teeth chattering, his 

 coat tails afloat, and his basket empty. A few hours 

 ago probably he left a comfortable home, pressing 

 business, waiting clients, and a dinner engagement. On 

 arriving at his ' water,' the keeper, as the tone of 

 keepers now is, despondingly informed him that there 

 is ' nae head [shoal] o' fish/ although at the utmost 

 there may be a happenin' beast, or, as we have heard 

 it expressed with that tendency to a mixture of 

 Latinisms with the Border patois, which is to be 

 ascribed, we suppose, to the influence of parochial 

 schools, ' There's aiblins a traunsient brute.' But in 

 his eagerness and ignorance he knows better than the 

 keeper ; and there he is at it still, in his seventh hour. 

 The wind is in his eye, the water is in his boots, but 

 Hope, the charmer, lingers in his heart. . . . 



It has been maintained, though perhaps not in cool 

 print, by men of sense and sobriety men not ignorant 

 of any of the delights to which flesh has served itself 

 heir, that the thrill of joy, fear and surprise (nowadays 

 surprise is the predominating emotion) induced by the 

 first tug of a salmon, is the most exquisite sensation of 

 which this mortal frame is susceptible whether he come 



