160 THE TROUT ARE RISING 
with me!” said he. The man who had safely 
steered the lad along was touched by the railway- 
man’s human kindness, and just as the lad was 
being put into the train, he said, “ Thank you 
very much, indeed!” Whereupon the patient 
turned round, and with an old-world courtesy, said 
to his original rescuer : “ Ye’re verra welcome !”’ 
Fishing lends itself peculiarly to the kindly 
grace of humour. There is a special type of 
angling joke. The “Come inside!” of Punch is, 
of course, a classic—a classic with honour in its 
own country, moreover. As a guest at the Fly 
Fishers’ Club in Piccadilly the other day, when 
looking round those wonderful walls, I caught 
sight of the old familiar illustration and text, duly 
framed. There is a pleasant anecdote (its printed 
source unknown to me) of an angler, engaged 
with his third bottle of beer, remarking, “There 
is this to be said about fishing: it does keep a 
man out of the public-houses.” In the Trans- 
vaal two men were bottom-fishing for yellow fish. 
One said he liked his friend’s float, with its ver- 
milion tip. It looked cheerful in the landscape. 
His friend replied : ‘ It looks much more cheerful 
when you cannot see it at all!” Once, when I 
was fly-fishing in South Africa in company with a 
Natal policeman, it came on to rain hard and we 
were both nearly drenched. ‘ Anyhow,” I said, 
“it will do good for the farmers!” “Yes, but 
I’m not a farmer!” quoth he. The humorist 
who takes to rod and line generally gets going. 
I remember one, on being told to throw in some 
