92 DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 



wait for miracles, keep it in constantly moistened 

 handkerchiefs with its mouth wide open and hope 

 that something will drop into it." 



Men, middle-aged men, and old men, too, grow 

 very boyish by a week's feasting on the sweet 

 imaginings of what may happen on the day for 

 which they have a permit to fish a water where the 

 fish seldom see a rod and, indeed, where education 

 in matters piscatorial has been so much neglected 

 that the most ancient of them are as innocent as 

 newly hatched gudgeon. I can see the backward 

 growth towards youth from day to day even in my 

 doctor, who can hide behind a stolid face the keen- 

 est pangs of sympathy and yet gets almost childish 

 in his anxiety for the three dozen dace that are 

 perfectly happy in my bath, where their forms, out- 

 lined against the white enamel sides, give promise 

 of much strong hauling of the float. 



The glorious uncertainty of the age and size that 

 the voracious pike, which eats up all else, may live 

 to grow to lends fascination to the search for a forty- 

 pounder. I know of one that weighed thirty-eight, 

 but that has been already caught and stuffed, not 

 by the doctor nor myself ; it's a bigger one we are 

 after, and we have the permit to fish where it is 

 most likely to be found. Who would not be 

 excited and go up two steps at a time to see if the 

 shoal of dace we are to go armed with are faring 

 well? We got quite skittish and very young, and 

 the attentions we required during the preparations 

 and for the start equalled, if they did not exceed, 

 those demanded by a wedding morning, and the 

 doctor was so much affected that his wife assured 

 me she would be very thankful when he was 



