122 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



where all men go armed courtesy and toleration 

 flourish, because no one knows what widespread 

 carnage may result from one over-hasty pistol-shot. 

 So fishermen, when they exchange their experi- 

 ences, are careful to raise no eyebrow, to utter no 

 dubious cough, lest the gentleness which charac- 

 terises the craft should suddenly give place to 

 wrath and contention. As of the whole, so of the 

 part. Mutual confidence is the foundation of our 

 society. We proceed upon the principle of " a lie 

 for a lie and an untruth for an untruth," all goes 

 swimmingly, and harmony prevails. 



I can never understand why anybody should 

 have wished to improve upon this admirable state 

 of things. Yet, at one time or another, some 

 angler must have found it unsatisfying. He was 

 probably a fisherman of so prodigious a talent 

 that he found that he had achieved the impossible 

 by stretching too far the forbearance of his friends. 

 And so, to bolster up his position amongst them, 

 he went away and made a trophy. Armed with 

 some distorted effigy of a 10-lb. trout, he returned 

 to their midst and laid it before them in silence 

 the proud, hurt silence of the deeply- wronged 

 man. Instead of tearing the traitor in pieces and 

 pulverising his cast, burning the fragments and 

 sowing the barren seashore with the ashes, they 

 gazed dumbly upon this proof of his veracity, 



