24 THE TROUT ARE RISING 
will taste sweet!” as John Burroughs said in 
“Pepacton.” It has been said that any man is a 
lad who is younger than himself. If there is 
anything more likely to confer this gift of youth 
on a man than a love of fishing, I have not yet 
come across it. 
The sport has its lights and shades, of course. 
If it rains hard all the time the angler is out, and 
if he is soaked, and if he is a rheumatic subject, 
and if he has had no luck at all, then the shades 
are apt to be sombre for the time being. Still, 
even then, the philosophical mind can turn it all 
to account by enquiring, ‘“‘Can fish laugh ? ”—a 
problem recently suggested in an evening paper. 
There is no lack of employment for the mind in 
the capture or attempt at capture of fish, The 
keen, wet-fly fisherman has to try all the likely 
spots, and sometimes even the unlikely, for trout. 
It is well to apply to trout fishing the remark of 
a digger about gold prospecting, viz.: ‘“ You 
can’t tell anything about gold, you're just as 
likely to find it where it ain’t as where it are!” 
To men of apparently inexhaustible energy, 
fishing is a joy: it appeals to them, not only as a 
rest but also as that “change of occupation ”’ 
which has been recommended to active minds. 
The late Colonel Sir George Farrar, Bart., 
D.S.O., one of the busiest of men (he crowned a 
patriotic career by giving his life for the Empire 
and his adopted country in the campaign in South- 
West Africa), used to find his greatest domestic 
happiness at his beloved Bedford Farm, near 
