THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



relief from domestic annoyances, and who in the 

 words of one of their poets, 



"bend their way 



To streams, where far from care and strife, 

 From smoky house and scolding wife, 

 They snare the finny race." 



Poor men ! they only resort to this melancholy 

 pastime in order to put their patience to the proof, 

 and fit them for severer trials ; for if the fire be 

 not out and the wife not dead, on their return home, 

 desperate indeed must be their condition. Gentle- 

 angler, laiigh not at those persons who are thus 

 driven to the water-side, to seek so desperate a 

 remedy for their woes : thou knowest not what 

 may hereafter be thy own fate. Pray that the 

 construction of their chimneys, and the temper of 

 their helpmates, may be amended ; bub if, after a 

 twelvemonth's absence, thou again mark an un- 

 happy man on the same spot, for pity's sake put 

 the sufferer out of pain. Taking him by the collar 

 of his coat and the waistband of his small-clothes, 

 gently cast him into the water he will have neither 

 strength nor inclination to resist hold him down 

 with the butt of his rod for the space of twenty 

 minutes, and then leave him to his beloved gud- 

 geons. Though thou canst not thus expect to gain 

 the medal of the Humane Society, thou wilt have 

 the pleasing consciousness of having relieved a 

 fellow-man, I almost said a brother angler, but, 

 with such, brother Bob is the word, of his cares, 



