CHAPTER IX 



A learned Editor and a clever Artist down Salisbury Way for 



Pike 



AT all periods of my life I have been amongst those 

 who have a high esteem for the gifts and responsi- 

 bilities of those whose talents have brought them to 

 the front in journalistic work, either with their pens 

 or pencils. I have friends that write for papers, 

 and others that draw for them, but up to the day 

 of which I write I had never seen an editor ; yet, 

 strange to say, I had the clearest notion, of my own 

 creation, as to what I should see when Fortune 

 should bring me face to face with one. 



It happened that one of these friends, very clever 

 with his pencil, asked me to join him in pursuit of 

 pike in one of our kindly landowners' preserves 

 down Salisbury way, but, before the day to start 



came round, he told me that the editor of The 



would come with us and asked me if I could be at 

 Waterloo to catch a certain afternoon train. Un- 

 fortunately a circumstance had arisen that would 

 prevent my starting until the morning after and, 

 when I told him this and it had been arranged that 

 I should find him and his friend near a certain 

 bridge, he offered to take the baits with him, but, 

 lacking in the confidence necessary to trust him 

 with the whole of them, I suggested his taking 

 half. 



108 



