SPEAKING GENERALLY 13 



of His Majesty's State Barge, but they may 

 be so decorated to order. Of the little discom- 

 forts which no expenditure will avert, a little salt 

 water on the face and hands should hurt no one ; 

 and those who go sea-fishing in clothes that they 

 mean to use ashore deserve all they get. The 

 seat up to windward, the sudden duck of the head 

 when the sail comes over, may not make up the 

 comforts of a camp-stool in a Thames punt, but 

 the brisk sail is more health-giving. 



At the same time there are forms of discom- 

 fort, for which I confess to having parted with 

 my earlier enthusiasm. Fishing in winter and 

 fishing at night time are for me only rare experi- 

 ences where once such zeal was chronic. I have 

 done that winter-fishing with the maddest ; blown 

 on my fingers before daybreak on Deal pier and 

 knocked the rime off my sea-boots in many a boat 

 that cleaved wintery seas, but ever since my 

 return from the Australian Colonies I saw no 

 humour in such sallies, and my fishing has been 

 an intermittent idyll of summer seas and estuaries, 

 with corn on the hills, not snow, with the shriek 

 of the swifts in my ears, not the calling of wild- 

 fowl, with early sunrises and long, warm sunsets, 

 not with that hurried transition between day and 

 night that chills those whom it finds on the 

 water. Everyone to his taste. I bask in flannels, 

 others shiver in tarpaulins. True, I have to give 



