OF AN ONLY CHUB 229 



one is an actor-manager with a fine chin, may be 

 suicidal for a gentleman in the City with a tendency 

 to bronchitis. But though he nearly lose his life 

 in the winter, with the spring and his first saunter 

 down St. James's Street, he is amply repaid if one 

 eye dilates, and he hastens with quickened pulse 

 in the direction of his prototype's theatre, doing 

 his best to look as if he were late for rehearsal. 



Such is the chevin in a trout stream. 



I say nothing about him in his own place. 

 Where dace and roach excite the emulous pole- 

 fisher, where barbel growt after macaroni-and-cheese 

 at dawn, where perch pull gay floats down among 

 the water lilies, there the chevin is all very well. 

 Fair play to him he is no easy fish to catch, though 

 why anyone should wish to catch him I cannot 

 conceive. His play is contemptible, for his heart is 

 dead within him from the strike, and he is only fit 

 for pike to eat, though they do not think so. 



But in trout water he is out of his class, and, 

 like every other thing which gets really above 

 its proper sphere, he is miserable unless he can 

 impose himself on the world as one who is there 

 of right. Should he do this he is happier than he 

 could ever be among fishes of his own or slightly 

 better kidney. In water where .chevins abound 

 and trout are rarities no one would mistake the 

 logger-headed creature for anything but himself. 



