You are staying at an inn, or at a friend's house, 

 on the banks of some river say the Tweed, the 

 Tyne, the Spey, or the Costello for the sake of 

 salmon-fishing. There has been a soaking rain 

 of eight hours' duration on the Tuesday, which 

 has brought the salmon up, and at six o'clock on 

 Thursday- morning -with a pleasant breeze from 

 the south-west; as much blue in the sky as will 

 make trowsers for every man in the Royal Navy; 

 and a cloud occasionally shading the sun's face 

 your fly is making his first circuit across the 

 berry-brown water of a pool in which you know 

 there are at least twenty salmon. For upwards of 

 an hour you flog that half mile of water till your 

 arms ache, but without success, the fish not yet 

 being disposed to take breakfast. As an excuse for 

 resting yourself, you sit down for twenty minutes, 

 and change your fly, putting on our No. 1, hare's 

 lug and bittern's wing. You return to the water 

 again, and ere the new fly has gone the circuit thrice, 

 he is served with a special retainer, in the shape of 

 a salmon, which, judging from his pull, you estimate 

 at thirty pounds, the largest and strongest, as you 

 verily believe, that you ever hooked. With that 

 headlong plunge, as if he meant to bury his 

 head in the gravelly bottom, he has hooked him- 

 self. Your hook, which will hold thirty pounds 

 dead weight, is buried in his jaws to the bend, and 

 now that he feels the barb, he shoots up the stream 

 with the swiftness of an arrow, and fifty yards of 



