SECOND EMPTYING. 55 



minnow, and having succeeded in getting within striking 

 distance of the animal, found himself confronted by the two 

 parent otters, which made a desperate effort to save their 

 young one. But the angler triumphed and carried off his 

 prize. " Christopher North " once caught an owl with a live 

 mouse, (what Christopher was doing fishing with live mice 

 is not clear,) anyhow, he hooked the owl, which sailed away 

 serenely to a neighbouring barn, and passing in through a hole 

 perched sedately and solemnly on a lofty rafter. With the 

 aid of a terrier, and after a desperate struggle on the hay 

 mow, in which it was difficult to tell which was owl, and 

 which terrier, and which Christopher, the bird was finally 

 secured, stuffed, and given to the Edinburgh Museum. 



A friend told me he was once fishing a pond for roach, 

 using a set of small flies tipped with maggots. Having used 

 up his maggots he went off to a friend at the other end of 

 the pond for a fresh supply, laying his rod on the bank with 

 the flies in the water. On his return he found he had hooked 

 an eel, and, pulling it out rather too sharply, the fish flew 

 overhead, and the tackle held fast round an overhanging 

 bough ; there the fish depended in the dusk, far above my 

 friend's head. While he was considering how to put matters 

 right, a bat took one of the other flies, and thus he had a bat 

 and an eel up a tree at the same moment. He broke his cast 

 and got both. 



* # 



It is in the nature of womankind, where'er you may roam, 

 to deliberately play the thingummy with suffering man at least 

 once a year. She begins by hiding every portable thing she 

 can lay her hands on. Man proud man, dressed in a new 

 spring suit, goeth forth in the morning a light-hearted, 

 unsuspecting victim, and returning as hungry as a pike in 

 the cool of the evening, he finds his home broken up, and 



