Fishing Day. 177 



Although many years have passed since that day, I could even now 

 find the very spot in the rough sedgy meadow where I killed my 

 first hare j and whatever may be the standing crop now in that 

 field, if I were only once again in it I fancy I could find my way 

 to within a hundred yards of where I shot my first partridge. As 

 for my first ran with foxhounds, why, that red-letter day in my 

 calendar will keep its freshness to the last. But whatever may be our 

 favourite sport in after years, there is one which I think I may safely 

 say was the dearest and most treasured of all the pastimes of our boy- 

 hood, to every one of us who had the opportunities of enjoying it : I 

 mean that of angling at once the most fascinating, innocent, and 

 least selfish of all field sports, and one whose quiet recreations are 

 so peculiarly adapted to our earliest youth or declining years. 



Moreover, there is less jealousy existing between the members of 

 the gentle art than among sportsmen of any other class Let the 

 north country angler boast of the Tweed, the Coquet, or the Till ; 

 let the richer and more aristocratic brother tell of the salmon he 

 has taken in the magnificent rivers of Northern Europe : the true 

 bottom-fisher of the Thames envies neither of them ; while the 

 trudging tinker, as he sits by the side of some favourite bream or 

 chub hole in one of our sluggish Midland streams, quietly watching 

 his float, and even the little shoeless urchin whose only treasures 

 consist in a " willow rod, some thread for line, a crooked pin for 

 hook," are both happy and contented in the full belief that theirs is 

 the only sport worth enjoying. 



And why is this ? Because, in whatever locality, in whatever 

 manner the sport is pursued, there is a quiet calm infused into the 

 angler's mind, when following his favourite pastime, which no other 

 sport can offer j and whatever the prey, whatever the scenery amid 

 which the angler roams, he sees the hand of God written in every 

 flower, in every blade of grass, and, unlike those who follow the 

 more boisterous pursuits of the chase, he has full time and leisure to 

 observe and reflect on all the beauties of nature which are so pro- 

 fusely spread before his eyes. 



Early associations lend a greater charm to the angler's sport than 



