IN THE SMOKING ROOM 161 
ground bait, inquiring whether a few old menu- 
cards would do. He was later informed he was 
fishing too deep. “No,” said he, “it’s the fish 
that are too deep!” 
At the fishing hotel, especially when the even- 
ings are soon dark, as in early spring or in autumn, 
a move may be made from the smoking-room to 
the drawing-room for some music, “sometimes 
part-singing, part not,” as a professional humorist 
once declared. When, as sometimes happens, 
one of the guests has a good voice and knows 
how to use it, he finds a very appreciative 
audience in the anglers together assembled, 
especially if any of them have their families with 
them too. Good melodious music is somehow 
very grateful after one has spent a day in the open 
air. It is not, of course, always easy to get the 
musical evening properly going. George Gros- 
smith, the elder, summed up the difficulties. 
“Those who can sing,” he said, “ won’t sing. 
While those who can’t sing will!” But at the inn 
the trouble is chiefly with those who can and 
won't, The hotel piano is sometimes both good 
and regularly tuned, and then it is a joy. Often, 
alas! it needs the dentist! But the saddest 
experience I ever had was in the Sudan. I was 
told there was a piano at a club, and thither I 
hastened as soon as I was off duty, anxious to 
get my hands on the keys. Something was amiss, 
however. The piano was quite dumb. I learnt 
that the wires had been taken out to make traces 
for fishing ! 
M 
