122 ANGLING SKETCHES 



attention to the soundness of your gut, and tackle 

 generally. What fiend is it that prompts a man 

 just to try a hopeless cast, in a low water, without 

 testing his tackle ? As sure as you do that, up 

 comes the fish, and with his first dash breaks your 

 casting line, and leaves you lamenting. This 

 doctrine I preach, being my own ' awful example.' 

 ' Bad and' careless little boy,' my worthy master 

 used to say at school ; and he would have pro- 

 voked a smile in other circumstances. But Mr. 

 Trotter, of the Edinburgh Academy, had some- 

 thing about him (he usually carried it in the tail- 

 pocket of his coat) which inspired respect and 

 discouraged ribaldry. Would that I had listened 

 to Mr. ■ Trotter ; would that I had corrected, in • 

 early, life, the happy-go-lucky disposition to scatter 

 my .Greek accents, as it were, with a pepper-caster, 

 to ; fish, with worn tackle, and, generally, to make 

 free with the responsibilities of life and literature. , 

 It is too late to amend, but others may learn 

 wisdom from this spectacle of deserved misfortune 

 and absolute discomfiture. 



I am not myself a salmon-fisher, though willing 



