A DAY'S PISHING IN THE ESK. 19 



On a warm autumnal morning, fresh and pleasant, heavy rains 

 having fallen the day before, my companion and I took the road 

 to Glencorse ; but before reaching that we thought it were wise 

 to strike the stream called Glencorse Burn, at Auchindinny 

 bridge, a lovely and sequestered spot, within a two hours' walk 

 of Edinburgh, As we neared the bridge, an angler appeared on 

 the opposite bank : the honest angler is always civil and often 

 liberal, so we hailed him. In a few minutes we three were 

 seated on the southern bank, a short way below the bridge, and 

 the contents of his basket turned out on the greensward for our 

 inspection. He told us his adventure. Starting long before 

 daybreak from Dalkeith pleasant Dalkeith! near Musselburgh, 

 he reached the stream above Glencorse, fishing it from that point 

 downwards to where we met him. His rod and flies were free to 

 our inspection, as were the two-and-a-half dozen pretty good 

 trout he had caught that morning. His flies were the moderate 

 size red hackle ; his lines without pretension : he was no ex- 

 perienced angler, but knowing enough to fish the waters after 

 floods, when trout will bite at anything and fear nothing. He 

 had caught no large trout, which would not have happened had 

 he used minnow as a bait ; but he had no apparatus, and pro- 

 bably but little knowledge of the more refined and skilful angling 

 for the overgrown inhabitants of the stream. He was a working- 

 man, a mechanic, living and working in a village ; one of those 

 who live in a round of ideas, a circle. In a thousand years they 

 scarcely advance a step, and if they do, it is lost in the next ten 

 centuries. Some think that the recession is somewhat less than 

 the precession, and thus a something is gained in every cen- 

 tury. Be it so ; but all admit that human progress is incon- 

 ceivably little all thinking men, I mean ; the great mass believe 

 otherwise ; but I need not say here what I think of them. I am 

 writing for thinking men, for anglers. 



Our new acquaintance left us, proceeding on his way ; we fol- 

 lowed shortly after. But soon heavy black clouds began to 

 obscure the high Pentlands ; rain followed as a matter of course, 



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