DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 91 



who devoted much time to this fish, suggested three 

 pourjds and that only those beyond that weight 

 should be eligible to be shown in the club-room. 

 A wag killed this, to my mind, excellent suggestion 

 by drawing all sorts of pictures of distress that 

 members would be liable to were it adopted. 

 He kept the members and, I must confess, the 

 President, in an uproar of laughter and then wound 

 up with what he was pleased to term the pathetic 

 side of this proposal. 



" You go out with your brother members to fish 

 in the pike competition, and what was your excuse 

 at home ? Why, of course you can hear yourself a- 

 saying it : ' The first prize is a china tea-service 

 and I stand a chance, dear.' What then? Why 

 you gets a jack ; leastways, it would have been a 

 jack had you not entertained this resolution, and 

 now what is it? Why, a pike, three pounds 

 two ounces, three pounds jack and two ounces 

 pike ; and it's on those two ounces that the 

 china tea-service hangs. Can't you see yourself 

 nursing those two ounces in damp handkerchiefs, 

 one of them borrowed from your chum, that they 

 may remain with you until weighing-in time? 

 They won't, unless a miracle happens. I have 



heard it said that it's a d d bad pike that won't 



increase in weight after capture, and to hear some 

 men talk they continue growing for years after. 

 My particular chum, Banfield, there, for instance ; 

 he isn't a big man, but he is the biggest authority, 

 for his size, that I know of on the growth of 

 captured fish ; what he has caught have grown by 

 leaps and bounds ; but that might not happen to 

 the one on which the tea-service hangs ; so don't 



