120 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



from a parapet, it is, paradox though this may 

 seem, far more humane and sportsmanlike to give 

 the fish, once hooked, little chance of escape and 

 to catch it on a Hne that would hold the week's 

 washing. 



With one more recollection, a sad one, I must 

 take leave of Mevagissey. Just as that first visit 

 in 1894 is associated with memories of Matthias 

 Dunn, so that of 1897 brings back a still more 

 remarkable personality. 'A year earlier I had 

 met Harold Frederic at the National Liberal 

 Club, at a time when we were both contribut- 

 ing to the Saturday Review. It may indeed 

 have been in Frank Harris's room upstairs that 

 I first met him, but my first memory is of a 

 spring afternoon at the club in Northumber- 

 land Avenue, where, after lunching with him, I 

 was telling him of the Cornish fishermen. Frederic 

 was always a student of such small industrial 

 communities, and, rather diffidently, I suggested 

 that he should pay me a visit when I went down 

 in August. To my great delight, he accepted. 

 The fishermen in due course interested him much ; 

 the fishing little. He was the slave of his news- 

 paper work, and often, when ten miles from land, 

 suddenly made notes from a telegram which had 

 to be sent to his paper in New York. He was a 

 keen, but not a good, fisherman ; obstinate, un- 

 adaptable, loth to graft local methods on his own 



