114 HAPPY HUNTING-GBOUNDS 



illustrated in his biography by Nimrod, of which the 

 first edition has become a rare and valuable classic ? 



But this singular incident in the history of Halston 

 lake is not half so memorable in my mind as the great 

 event in my piscatorial experiences which I have just 

 recorded. Not only had I caught my first trout, but 

 I was allowed to eat it for my breakfast. From that 

 day I worked my way up from the worm to the spoon, 

 from the spoon to the minnow, from the minnow to 

 the fly, and made up by perseverance for want of 

 skill. I know that in the pond at Blackdown in 

 Sussex I got a trout of two pounds weight on a small 

 spoon attached to my reel line without any gut cast, 

 and landed him without a net, pulling him by main 

 force on to the shore, which was not even sloping ; 

 but how it happened I am at a loss in the light of 

 later experience to conjecture. Such miracles of good 

 fortune fall only to the lot of the tyro who is doubtless 

 strong in the faith which enables him to remove 

 mountains of difficulty. 



When I left my first school, where I had spent 

 some six very miserable months, my master gave me 

 two books Spenser's Faery Queen, and Forest Life : 

 a Fisherman's Sketches in Norway and Sweden, by 

 the Bev. Henry Newland ; and after more than fifty 

 years the latter volume is still one of my cherished 

 treasures. My copy is the second edition, published 

 by Boutledge in 1855. It gives in the form of fiction 

 the sporting adventures of the author and his com- 

 panions in Scandinavia, and my mouth waters as I 

 read how those early pioneers wandered without let 

 or hindrance from river to lake, and from forest to 

 fjeld, camping, shooting, and fishing wherever they 



