BRITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



not the green drake on ? And while he reigns, all hours, 

 meals, decencies, and respectabilities must yield to his caprice. 

 See, here he sits, or rather tens of thousands of him, one on 

 each stalk of grass. Green drake, yellow drake, brown drake, 

 white drake, each with his gauzy wings folded over his back, 

 waiting for some unknown change of temperature, or some- 

 thing else, in the afternoon, to wake him from his sleep, and 

 send him fluttering over the stream ; while overhead the 

 black drake, who has changed his skin and reproduced his 

 species, dances in the sunshine, empty, hard, and happy, like 

 Festus Bailey's Great Black Crow (the only humorous thing he 

 ever wrote), who all his life sings : 



" Ho, ho, ho. 

 For no one ivill eat him, he well doth knozv,^^ 



' However, as we have insides, and he has actually none, and 

 what is more strange, not even a mouth wherewith to fill the 

 said insides, we had better copy his brothers and sisters below 

 whose insides are still left, and settle with them upon the grass 

 awhile beneath yon goodly elm. 



' Comfort yourself with a glass of sherry and a biscuit, and 

 give the keeper one, and likewise a cigar. He will value it at 

 five times its worth, not for the pleasure of it, but because it 

 raises him in the social scale. " Any cad," so he holds, 

 " smokes pipes ; but a good cigar is the note of a gentleman," 

 and of them who " keep company with the quality," as 

 keepers do. He puts it in his hat-crown, to smoke this even- 

 ing in presence of his compeers at the public-house, retires 

 modestly ten yards, lies down on his back in a dry-feeder, 

 under the shade of the long grass, and instantly falls fast 

 asleep. Poor fellow ! he was up all last night in the covers, 

 and will be again to-night. Let him sleep while he may, and 

 we will chat over chalk-fishing. 



' The first thing, probably, on which you will be inclined 

 to ask questions, is the size of the fish in these streams. We 

 have killed this morning four fish averaging a pound weight 



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