XVIII 



I FIND the following in an old note-book : ' It was a 

 favourite saying of Dr. Alexander Ross that, ^ a terside 

 as sunshine of years long bygone is stored Memories 

 up in coal-measures, so past enjoyment should be gar- 

 nered in the soul as a source of warmth and light in 

 dark days.' Who Dr. Ross may have been I cannot 

 now guess ; but his metaphor is just, and applies to no 

 reminiscence more aptly than to that of an old angler. 

 Let me jot down in this snug armchair by the fireside 

 a few incidents that rise in retrospect upon days by 

 the waterside. 



Of those who were Eton boys in 1860, some survivors 

 may remember the adventure of a small boy named 

 Jodrell with a big trout, resulting in the most singular 

 capture that I have known. A little above the Playing 

 Fields a mill-stream flows into the Thames on the left 

 bank, and just at the junction there was in those days 

 a brick arch through which a large drain discharged 

 sewage from the college. No doubt the Thames Con- 

 servancy Board have caused that primitive arrange- 

 ment to be changed ; but so long as it remained, this 

 unsavoury affluent often attracted a large trout to make 

 it his hunting-ground. One day Jodrell, who, although 



