64 BY MEADOW AND STREAM. 



something for ' ' The Fishing Gazette " with no other 

 fund to draw upon than the weather. Nothing but 

 angling for the angler ! and no angling experiences 

 have befallen me ; not a stream have I visited, not a 

 fly have I cast on the water, since that pleasant day 

 in the month of September last when I hooked and 

 brought home that big grayling which now smiles 

 upon me from a glass case on yonder wall. " Hack- 

 neyed in business " for six months or more without 

 intermission, the spirit rebels, and now that 



" Sturdy March, with brows full sternly bent, 

 And armed strongly, riding on a ram," 



is again upon us, one begins, like the spring itself, to 

 feel the stirring of nature within one, and to lament 

 the fate which ties one to a stool when longing once 

 more to be off to the woods and the fields. 



Up to the time of this writing the March of 1894 

 has been rather gentle and lamblike than leonine and 

 blustering, still, 



"The west wind loud, 

 Rising in vigorous and sonorous play," 



has helped to rouse the teeming earth, and made us 

 feel that spring has come ! We have had none of 

 those icy blasts from the frigid plains of Siberia, 

 which, however, may yet come to remind us that 

 winter has not quite gone. Better that those cold 

 easterly winds should come now than in the merry 

 month of May, as they not unfrequently do. This is 

 truly the month of "strength and life and hope." 

 Hitherto we have had sunny mornings, westerly 

 winds, and rainy evenings, and very little of the 



