A DAMP GENTLEMAN 119 



In this dilemma he looked wistfully at the shore for 

 advice. " How deep should I go ? " said the enter- 

 prising man. One said to the fifth button of your 

 waistcoat, and the other to your shirt-collar. He 

 preferred the fifth button ; and soon treading on a 

 faithless stone, fairly toppled head foremost into the 

 pool. His hand relaxed its grasp, and away went 

 the fishing rod down the stream. He himself was 

 soon placed out of danger by the gentlemen an 

 attention that, considering all things, he was fairly 

 entitled to ; but his rod lay across the river, the butt 

 end opposed in its passage by one rock in the middle 

 of it, and the top by another ; so the weight of the 

 stream bore upon the centre, and snapped it in twain. 

 The corpulent gentleman took all with the greatest 

 good humour ; and as the water streamed from him 

 at all points, as it were from a river god, and as he 

 applied a brandy flask to his mouth, he said only at 

 the intervals between his potations, " I am not 

 quite so sure that your waders catch the most fish ; 

 gentlemen, I say, I have my doubts of it." 



To the credit of my friends be it spoken, they 

 waded and swam after the two divisions of his 

 rod, which they spliced together for him, and 

 set him going again ; not in the faithless water, 

 but on the trusty shore, which he now seemed to 

 prefer. 



I cannot in conscience recommend a course of 

 wading to a sedentary man as a new experiment, or 

 even as an old custom revived after a lapse of 

 years ; and this for the following reason. 



General Gowdie was born on the banks of t\ie 



