170 THE TROUT ARE RISING 
think it a good omen if some one in this way 
wishes me “Good luck!” or “ Tight lines !” or 
“Hope you'll have sport!” And it often 
happens, for angling is productive of much good- 
will and fellowship. One morning, just as I was 
starting out in waders, a stranger remarked, 
cordially : ‘“‘ Wish I were coming with you!” 
Obviously, he was a fisherman. I found later 
that this was the case. Formerly a distinguished 
barrister, he was now a County Court judge, and 
he was there on his circuit. It was a human 
touch, “ Wish I were coming with you!” 
I remember a similar expression of quick 
sympathy of much older date. It was in the old 
reporting days in Johannesburg, when I was 
“‘ diarized,” as the phrase is, to report a sermon 
by one of the Church of England mission which 
came to South Africa in 1904. It was a sermon 
worth listening to, and worthy of the space the 
Press gave to it. In the vestry I had to see the 
preacher afterwards. He remarked on the variety 
of a reporter’s life, and I confessed that I had not 
expected to be doing a sermon. I had, in fact, 
hoped to be at the big boxing encounter that night 
at the Wanderers. “I should very much have 
liked to be there myself,” said he. Afterwards, 
I learned that he had been a great boxer at 
Oxford! If his attainments in that direction 
were as powerful as his preaching, he was a host 
to reckon with. . 
What angler does not retain happy memories 
of “the friendly lift” which is the result of a 
