122 ANGLING SKETCHES 



attention to the soundness of your gut, and tackle 

 generally. What fiend is it that prompts a man 

 just to try a hopeless cast, in a low water, without 

 testing his tackle ? As sure as you do that, up 

 comes the fish, and with his first dash breaks your 

 casting line, and leaves you lamenting. This 

 doctrine I preach, being my own 'awful example.' 

 ' Bad and careless little boy,' my worthy master 

 used to say at school ; and he would have pro- 

 voked a smile in other circumstances. But Mr. 

 Trotter, of the Edinburgh Academy, had some- 

 thing about him (he usually carried it in the tail- 

 pocket of his coat) which inspired respect and 

 discouraged ribaldry. Would that I had listened 

 to Mr. Trotter ; would that I had corrected, in 

 early life, the happy-go-lucky disposition to scatter 

 my Greek accents, as it were, with a pepper-caster, 

 to fish with worn tackle, and, generally, to make 

 free with the responsibilities of life and literature. 

 It is too late to amend, but others may learn 

 wisdom from this spectacle of deserved misfortune 

 and absolute discomfiture. 



I am not myself a salmon-fisher, though willing 



