28 AN ANGLER'S BASKET. 



you that when the weather is hot, and the disappointed 

 common fly-fisher is baked out of the river, it is cool among 

 the whispering leaves of the sycamore, and the big trout lie 

 thereunder, unsuspicious of the cruel trickster high above 

 them. Few men, however, live to be truly great as bobbers, 

 but in the apprenticeship to the art the possibilities are 

 unbounded. Why, I do solemnly set it down that I have 

 seen a bobber over ten feet of water astride of the branch of 

 an oak, with his legs tied together beneath it in a kind of 

 weaver's knot a man who " grows old and is fat " playing 

 a trout with his left hand, while with his right he strove to 

 repulse the fiery onslaught of an inconsiderate wasp ; and 

 still there are men who are not sufficiently educated to sea 

 anything in bobbing, the mere game with the wasp, though 

 vulgar, being something the keenest mind can understand. 



TYPICAL ANGLERS. 



I repeat that as angling is a fine art, so too ought to be 

 the narration of the details of it. There are few things in 

 the ordinary course of life that are worth telling as bald facts ; 

 they must be touched up a bit, added to here and there, 

 detracted from in places, to maintain a proper balance and 

 give a greater air of realism to the whole ; and if anyone is 

 capable by prescriptive right of doing this as it ought to be 

 done, and as no one else can do it, it is the angler. The 

 methods of the shooter and the hunter lack refinement 

 altogether. Do not, however, you who are a non-angler and 

 may read this, persuade yourself that a gathering of anglers 

 talks of fish and nothing but fishing. Here, for instance, is 

 a famous chemist enlarging on the wonderful beauty of 

 a botanical gem of great price. Here is a geologist, with 

 his pockets full of stones which he tells you are worth a 

 king's ransom to him ; a third has been noting a peculiarity 

 in the natural mode of progression in the common hare ; a 



