A DAMP GENTLEMAN. 113 



coat, and the other to your shirt-collar. He preferred 

 the fifth button; and soon treading on a faithless stone, 

 fairly toppled head foremost into the pool. His hand 

 relaxed its grasp, and away went the fishing rod down 

 the stream. He himself was soon placed out of danger 

 by the gentlemen, — an attention that, considering all 

 things, he was fairly entitled to ; but his rod lay across 

 the river, the butt end opposed in its passage by one 

 rock in the middle of it, and the top by another ; so the 

 weight of the stream bore upon the centre, and snapped 

 it in twain. The corpulent gentleman took all with the 

 greatest good humour ; and as the water streamed from 

 him at all points, as it were from a river god, and as he 

 applied a brandy flask to his mouth, he said only at the 

 intervals between his potations, " I am not quite so sure 

 that your waders catch the most fish ; gentlemen, I say, 

 I have my doubts of it." 



To the credit of my friends be it spoken, they waded 

 and swam after the two divisions of his rod, which they 

 spliced together for him, and set him going again ; not 

 in the faithless water, but on the trusty shore, which he 

 now seemed to prefer. 



I cannot in conscience recommend a course of wading 

 to a sedentary man as a new experiment, or even as an 

 old custom revived after a lapse of years ; and this for 

 the following reason. 



General Gowdie was born on the banks of the 

 Leader-water, which falls into the Tweed about a mile 

 and a half below Melrose, near Fly Bridge. In his youth 

 he was an ardent and expert salmon fisher ; in after life 

 he went out to India, and served honourably there for 



