DUM CAPIMUS CAPIMUR. 7 
bagged your fifth, and triumphantly informs you that 
her size is “sixes, sir!” ‘“ Again, come,—double or 
quits?”—If you are lucky you may possibly win ; 
but if you are not only not lucky but in love, you 
lose to a dead certainty. Something must be wrong : 
you examine your little red worm with an unloving 
and critical eye, and you find that your No. 9 Kendal 
is minus its barb! Well, that’s soon remedied :— 
“Come, one more pair?” but Julia declines with 
thanks the proffered “glove,” and hints that when she 
accepted it before “your hand wasn’t in!” The little 
sharper! Well, so she is—sharper than you at all 
events ; and she might have accepted your challenge, 
sir, with the utmost safety if she had chosen to “bleed” 
you; for she is one of the best gudgeon-fishers on the 
Thames, and when ladies do take in earnest to catching 
gudgeon, let me tell you they beat the lords of crea- 
tion into fits. “Bless you!” as a Smithfield butcher 
once observed to me @ propos of sticking pigs, “it 
comes nat’ral to ’em !” 
But how's this? the gudgeon have all of a sud- 
den left off biting? half-a-dozen swims without a 
nibble—* give them another Rake.” You do, till your 
arms ache. But you might just as well give them 
another Spade for any effect it produces. Stay—I 
see! My friend Mr. Perch is down below, and the 
process of biting, so far as the gudgeon are concerned, 
is taking a passive instead of an active form. Try 
