OUT OF BOUNDS 



LIKE a very leisurely blue-coiled snake, the Thames 

 runs, in summer time, in and out among the Bucking- 

 hamshire hills. Enough water flows out from the 

 Berkshire and Oxfordshire meadows, and from the 

 wooded slopes of the Cotswolds, to keep it always 

 fairly full, though in summer the angler often waits 

 a long time before a high thunder-storm will colour 

 the water enough for his purpose. To-day, two 

 fishermen have come up the river from London, and 

 are bewildered because they cannot find the river. 

 There is water almost all round the station. It laps 

 the very metals of the railway line, rushes through 

 culverts usually dry, and swirls across the road by 

 which one ordinarily readies the river. The Thames 

 has become a mere current in the sea. Its banks are 

 of water reasonably still, its towing-paths are ledges 

 of gravel on which adventurous gudgeon may feed, 

 its shallows are deeps, its depths chasms, rapids are 

 pools, beaches rapids, bends backwaters, peninsulas 

 islands. Our fishermen can either go out in a strong 

 boat, and take soundings for the river, or they can 

 fish for pike above the buttercup roots, and try 

 whether the carp are singing : " Where the bee sucks 

 there suck I." 



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