4 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SALMON FISHING 



Pooley, you must own, dreadfully excited and it 

 well became you to be so, for the moment was awful ; 

 but we will leave you to resume your tranquillity. 

 We grant you our sympathy, but deny you our 

 company. 



Pass we on to the more ambitious angler, even to 

 our adventurous acquaintance, Mr. John Poplin. 

 He cannot submit to the worm, paste, or float not 

 he. His skilful arm is practised to wave his rod 

 gracefully, with nothing less at the end of the line 

 than the green granam fly. Reclining on his sofa, 

 and tinted with a slight suffusion of bile, he has seen 

 on one auspicious morn a seductive advertisement, 

 headed " Trout Fishing." With eager pen he re- 

 sponds to A. B. ; pays a guinea for a ticket to enable 

 him to angle for trout during a whole season, in a 

 part of the river Wandle that is strictly preserved. 

 How very cheap ! After pulling about monstrous 

 fish in his dreams all night he pays his guinea, and 

 drives off to the Elysian fields : there he beholds the 

 whole extent of the fishery lying before him a mill- 

 pond full seventy yards long, one side only belong- 

 ing to the advertiser in right of a small water 

 meadow. The spot seems a favourite one ; for a 

 goodly company of citizens are extended along the 

 bank in line at three feet asunder a similar number 

 on the opposite bank. Now three feet is a liberal 

 allowance, for only two are granted for a soldier 

 standing in close order. With graceful obeisance 

 and skilful tact he apologises, and wedges himself 

 into line ; hooks his neighbour's tackle on the right 

 the very first throw, whilst he on his left hooks his. 



