124 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



the whale that swallowed Jonah. And I would. 

 If the house did not contain it, it should stand in 

 the garden and I would paint it once every three 

 years with not less than three coats of good and 

 substantial oil colour. 



It was one of the greatest living anglers who 

 unwittingly opened my eyes to the fact that these 

 things are impostures. Wishing to impress me 

 with a proper understanding of his supremacy and 

 the length of time he had enjoyed it, he once told 

 me that the trophies of Thames jack which he 

 had collected during his residence at Oxford at 

 Oxford, mark you, when he was a mere boy were 

 so large that he could not afford to take them 

 down with him. He wished me, I believe, to infer 

 from this that the loss of his unique collection was 

 of less moment to him, the skilful angler, than 

 was the cost of its freight to Paddington to him, 

 the undergraduate, with many calls upon his purse. 

 But I gathered more from his abandonment of 

 these trophies than he perhaps intended me to do. 

 It is obvious that they were so big that they could 

 not be taken out of his lodgings without injury 

 to the house, and that the ground landlord obtained 

 an injunction against their removal as being parcel 

 of the freehold. To this inference a corollary 

 attaches. As they could not be taken out they 

 were never brought in. In other words, they were 



