A May Day's Angling 91 



Mimram — the merest babbling brook in its 

 upper portions — are scarcely less esteemed by 

 those who know all these waters well than 

 the more famous chalk streams of Hamp- 

 shire and Berkshire. 



One delightful day out of many such 

 loitered away on a stream in a peaceful 

 district in Hertfordshire somehow always 

 stands out clear and vivid in my memory, 

 though the bag was a very modest one 

 indeed. This is a beautiful stretch of the 

 clearest and least polluted water, and so 

 easily reached that one may actually leave 

 town after lunch, if a whole day be not 

 available, and after three-quarters of an hour 

 on that estimable line, the Great Northern, 

 and twenty minutes' drive from the station, 

 be, rod in hand, in the sweetest and quietest 

 of meadows. One may get one's brace or 

 perhaps several brace of trout, averaging at 

 the least a pound — for there is a twelve-inch 

 limit — and be back in town to dinner. On 

 one occasion — in May 1892 — in the ex- 

 cellent company of a north-country angling 



