96 MOSTLY ABOUT TROUT 



sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant 

 meadows. 



Look ! under that beech-tree I sat down, when I was 

 last this way a-fishing. And the birds in the adjoining 

 grove seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow 

 of that primrose hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams 

 glide gently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea ; 

 yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, 

 which broke their waves and turned them into foam. . . . 



As thus I sat, these and other sights had so fully pos- 

 sessed my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet 

 has happily expressed it, 



I was for that time lifted above earth 



And possess'd joys not promised at my birth. 



But every wise man has his own hobby, and 

 to those to whom such joys do not appeal there 

 remains the advice of the statesman from whose 

 address, delivered in the United States at the 

 Harvard Union, in December 1919, I have 

 already quoted : " If you do not care for fishing, 

 do not fish. Why should you ? But if we are 

 to be quits, and you are to be on the same 

 happy level as I have been, then find some- 

 thing for yourself which you like as much as I 

 like fishing." 



