TROUT FISHING IN MAINE. 249 







hook a heavy fish, such a one as required the utmost 

 skill and attention under favourable circumstances to 

 master. Of course, as might be expected, the wreck 

 was completed by a break, and the foe made good his 

 escape. However, it invariably happens that the angler 

 considers those that escape much larger than any that 

 have succumbed. A day or two since, having some 

 business in that portion of the town where many of 

 the elite of the disciples of dear old Izaak congre- 

 gate, I came across two whose prowess and skill had 

 been well tried by long experience, and whose success 

 as anglers is probably second to no others. After the 

 usual greetings, the sine qua non, the ne plus ultra of 

 their pleasures were broached, and the prospects dis- 

 cussed. May we say that it was with feelings almost 

 akin to selfishness that we listened to the numerous 

 delightful distant visits arranged, where well- stocked 

 murmuring brooks or rapid rivers pursue their erratic 

 and picturesque course to the ocean, far, far away from 

 the busy haunts of man, where the wild duck and deer 

 rear their harmless young, and where the lordly, 

 silver- sheened salmon leaps in sportive plunge over 

 the foaming crest of the headlong rapid? But no 

 such trip is in store for us. Pens, ink, and paper have 

 to be our companions, and the monotonous and well- 

 known walls of a city do duty for a rural landscape. 



