LEWES AND ITS COUNTRY 83 



back to the old days when as a boy you kicked 

 all the clothes off at night and tumbled yourself 

 into river, pool (or pond, for that matter), or sea 

 by day, even if you had to play truant — '* dolly," 

 we used to call it — to let instinct have an innings. 

 Summer, with the glaring, blazing, broiling sun 

 to make you jump for thinking of boxing about 

 in a sailing boat from Newhaven Harbour, as 

 soon as a whiff of Stockholm tar gave you the 

 office, or want to loot the fit-out of the innocent 

 angling stranger — piscator and viator in one — 

 making up to the upper reaches of the Ouse on 

 fishing intent. The Ouse ? Oh ! yes, there are 

 Ouses and Ouses, and salmon in both — I mean 

 in some — and Lewes has one, as I have mentioned 

 before. How many do I know, not by sight, as 

 you may say, but on speaking terms ? There is 

 the Yorkshire one, by whosejbanks have I trudged 

 many and many a mile, a very presentable stream 

 up by York, and a very muddy flow down by 

 Selby, where the saffron grows, and the wild 

 hop flourishes to an extent which Kent's culti- 

 vated branch of the family might well envy, and 

 the dewberries are big as raspberries. Then 

 there is the Bedfordshire member of the family, 

 which helps Cambridge to train its crews and 

 passes into the sea down King's Lynn way, a 

 very muddy sort of flow. The French Oise, on 

 whose banks I was last week, is, I suppose, to be 

 reckoned a member of the class — and there are 

 others. 



The Ouse and the Cliffe — they come together 

 along the Glynde road — seem perhaps Lewes's 

 most special landmarks. The pleasant old Bear 

 Inn achieves the feat of being literally in the 

 one and the other. Let me explain that this is 



