CLOSING YEARS. 457 



a youthful passion, one that with him never grew old. It was an 

 affecting sight to see him busy, nay, quite absorbed, with the fishing- 

 tackle scattered about his bed, propped up with pillows — his noble 

 head, yet glorious with its flowing locks, carefully combed by at- 

 tentive hands, and falling on each side of his unfaded face. How 

 neatly he picked out each elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, 

 drawing it out with trembling hand along the white coverlet, and 

 then, replacing it in his pocket-book, he would tell ever and anon 

 of the streams he used to fish in of old, and of the deeds he had per- 

 formed in his childhood and youth.* These precious relics of a by- 

 gone sport were wont to be brought out in the early spring, long 

 before sickness confined him to his room. It had been a habit of 

 many years, but then the " sporting jacket" was donned soon after, 

 and angling was no more a mere delightful day-dream, but a reality, 

 " that took him knee-deep, or waistband-high, through river-feeding 

 torrents, to the glorious music of his running and ringing reel." 

 This outward life was at an end. With something of a prophetic 

 spirit did he write in former days, when he affected the age he had 

 not attained — how love for all sports would live in his heart for- 

 ever : " Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and 

 our feet must brush the heather no more. Lo ! how beautifully 

 these fast travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's 

 breast ! intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, 

 and now all a stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death ! Higher up 

 among the rocks, and cliff's, and stones, we see a stripling whose 

 ambition it is to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair 

 in the misty cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan now in their variegated 

 summer dress, seen even among the unmelted snows. Never shall 

 Eld deaden our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men any 

 more than with their highest raptures, their profoundest griefs." 

 Nor did he belie the words. 



We were naturally desirous of keeping from his knowledge any 

 thing that would surprise him into agitation. This could not, how- 

 ever, always be done, for family distress, as a matter of course, he 

 must participate in. The day which brought us intelligence of Mrs. 

 Rutherford's death was one of startling sorrow to him. His own 



* A year or two earlier he writes to his youngest daughter: — "I took stock, and find I have 

 forly-four dozen loch flies and fifty-six of stream flies. Of the latter six dozen are well adapted 

 for our river ; but ' Lord Salton 1 is nearly done, and must be renewed. Into the Tarrow I shall 

 never again throw a fly." 



19* 



