66 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



and the distinguished strangers had ten pounds or so 

 more. Roach fishing is not an exciting phase of sport, 

 but it is by no means the tame or simple pursuit many 

 persons affect to think it, and it is not unworthy of the 

 name of high art. Moreover, it is a most pleasure- 

 yielding occupation, and, amongst London anglers at 

 least, furnishes, it cannot be denied, the greatest happi- 

 ness for the greatest number. 



Best-day memories of this fish should assuredly take 

 us back to the far-off schoolboy times when we used to 

 " snatch a fearful joy " by surreptitious visits to the 

 mill stream, and when, with a little hazel rod, length of 

 whipcord, and rude hooks whipped to twisted horsehair, 

 we would hurry home to breakfast with a dozen roach 

 strung through the gills upon a twig of osier. They 

 were all best days then. 



I should be the most ungrateful of anglers if I did 

 not acknowledge my indebtedness to the dace. It so 

 happened that, whatever else fortune denied me, it 

 gave me opportunities, of which I could without hard- 

 ship avail myself, for dace fishing ; and, whatever sins 

 of omission I may in my old age have to bring forward 

 in self-accusation, I shall never be able to plead guilty 

 to neglecting any opportunities soever in the matter of 

 angling. For the dace, therefore, as a fish whose 

 merits I have appreciated from youth upwards, I enter- 

 tain great respect. There is no dulness about it. Go 

 down to the fords where the dace are gathered, and 

 you shall see the water boiling with their gambols, and 

 shooting silver as they wheel and frisk about. Take 

 them under any circumstances, so long as they are in 

 season, and they always impress you with their liveliness 

 of character. The roach in biting sometimes scarcely 

 moves the quill float ; the dace startles you by its 

 sudden, sharp onslaught. A roach firmly hooked ought 



