2 1 6 WA TERSIDE SKETCHES. 



I here found my master — ray lady superior. Never an 

 entanglement, never a false throw, never any trouble with 

 rings or reel, never the faintest appearance of flurry was 

 she guilty of. A toxophilite, of the feminine gender, in the 

 act of discharging an arrow from the bow, a huntress 'lift- 

 ing ' her horse over a stiff fence, a girl bending to the oars 

 on a silver stream, are fit subjects for any painter, but not 

 worthy of comparison with my Angling Divinity of Gar- 

 stanger Park. 



" She answered the purpose, as it were, of a whirlpool 

 to our boat; it began to draw insensibly into the vortex. 

 We approached nearer and nearer. The boobiest of fel- 

 lows maintained his masterly inactivity, turning over page 

 after page of his buff-covered book, and allowing the nut- 

 brown maid — when, having thoroughly fished her circle, 

 she paddled to new ground — to handle the oars without 

 a scrap of assistance from his long, white, useless fingers. 



" Aha ! she had him at last — not the supine novel- 

 reader — but a fish ! For this I had been waiting. A lady 

 who could spin for pike in this most mistressly style, I 

 had for the first time beheld ; but what would she do with 

 it when the critical moment arrived? It was, as I might 

 have known, of a piece with the rest. She handled the 

 fresh-water shark with consummate skill : it ought to have 

 been a pleasure to any well-regulated pike to be so scien- 

 tifically dealt with. I could tell by the quick jerk of the 

 rod that the deluded fish was a good one, and the sharp, 

 prompt little twist of the lady's wrist was proof positive 

 that the triangles had been well struck into him. 



" Sensible woman ! Yet it was so like her sex to permit 

 the captive to bolt about wherever he listed, confident that 



