xiv A SUBURBAN FISHERY 239 



fishing in the first place, and in the second, 

 supposing that he performed it, one may 

 safely assert that he would firmly refuse to 

 be cultivated even for the sake of also 

 acquiring a valuable soul ; a soul is a value- 

 able thing, and my friend's, for all his 

 freedom of speech, is worth more than 

 most, but it is not so valuable as all that. 

 Trout - fishing within twenty miles of 

 London belongs to the world of dreams, 

 where are also the elixir of life, the philo- 

 sopher's stone, the rainbow's end, and other 

 unrealisable delights, and the common man 

 whose dreams do not come true must awake 

 out of sleep and travel into a far country 

 before he can get his fishing. 



Trout and trout -fishing are not neces- 

 sarily the same thing, or I should not speak 

 thus from the depths. There are trout 

 within twenty miles of London ; there are 

 trout in London. A noble lord captured 

 one with a fly quite recently from the lake 

 in Buckingham Palace grounds. He even 

 rose others ; or, as one of our less highly 

 priced newspapers naively put it, others 

 " made several bites " at his fly. This was 

 a rainbow trout, a fact which adds its small 



