x. PREFACE. 



chief prizes not infrequently escape us just when we think 

 we are most secure of them 



Here's nothing to be got now-a-days, unless thou canst fish for 't. 



PERICLES. 



But the poorest angler is never bankrupt so long as his 

 imagination consents to honour his drafts upon her. There 

 is certainly something about it, whether it be practised in 

 river, loch, or sea, which conduces to calm serenity of mind 

 and that kindliness of feeling which is the foundation of all 

 good humour. 



I was fishing a Scotch river once in the company of a 

 friend who lived in an adjoining county, where, in the ruins 

 of an ancient stronghold, I espied a modern gun command- 

 ing a wide sweep of the valley and dominating the approach 

 to the spot completely. On enquiring why it was thus 

 placed, my friend, who was Scotch to the backbone, and 

 under ordinary conditions would no more have thought of 

 making a joke than of saying his prayers on the river bank, 

 and perhaps not so much, replied, " Oh ! that is just a 

 cannon that is no fired except when there is a new queen ; 

 or when somebody cautches a fish." 



Is there, think you always excepting an old lady 

 anything more delightful than an old man whose head is 

 white with the snows of many winters, and who still carries 

 \vith him, wherever he goes, something of the sunny spring- 

 tide of his youth ? Men who have spent the greater part of 

 their lives in the fields and woods under the blessedness of 

 the great lights and shadows from the blue above, such 

 surroundings as Mr. Ruskin meant in "The unutterable 

 constancy of the sea-shell and the sun," have this merry- 

 heartedness more than any other men, and all old anglers 

 have it in particular. 



How many of them do I recall since I caught my first 

 fish, forty years ago ! One such old crony I can see now on 



