160 AN ANGLER'S HOURS ix 



as well on a hot day when he has had his 

 tea, and after all we can spare half an hour 

 from one pleasure if we devote it to another. 

 And without doubt it is a keen pleasure to 

 sit in the little parlour at the farm looking 

 out of the open window into the little 

 garden, and enjoying the scent of the wall- 

 flowers, remembering not too obtrusively 

 the while how odious the great city must be 

 at this moment with its airless roads, glaring 

 pavements, and its disconsolate rows of black 

 skeletons, that are set up by way of adorn- 

 ment and humourously called plane-trees. 

 And the hot tea is itself a blessed thing, the 

 best of the homoeopathic cures, and far 

 more cooling in the long-run than ice. 



And so let us return to the river refreshed 

 and strengthened. Now you can see what 

 a May-fly rise really means. The insect is 

 floating down-stream literally in thousands ; 

 he is fluttering over it, he is dancing up and 

 down the bank, he is clinging to every twig 

 and blade of grass ; he has settled, several of 

 him, on our hats, and one is on the middle 

 joint of the rod. The whole river-side is 

 an astonishing carnival of life. The 

 swallows are flying low in short circles 



