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No sportsman need take three large baskets to the Gala now, as Lauder did, and actually filled them with thirty-six dozen of trout. The modern angler must not allow his expectations to be raised too highly by these stories. Sport has become much more difficult in these times of rapidly growing population.
By the time that my father and mother returned, I had come to the conclusion that the bank of a river was, of all situations, the most desirable for one's home, and had built endless bowers in the air like that in which the anglers are seated in the picture entitled 'The Farewell; and had imagined myself in a tall hat and a stiff-bustled dress cooking fish for my favourite brothers after the recipes in Walton and Cotton's 'Complete Angler.
There, as he wades, he sees a hundred sights and hears a hundred tones, which are hidden from the traveller on the dusty highway above. The traveller fancies that he has seen the country. So he has; the outside of it, at least: but the angler only sees the inside.
She cannot bear the thought of giving pain to any dumb creature; and just before our garden there are a few trout which she has tamed. They feed out of her hand; she is always afraid they will wander away and get caught." "But Mr. Melville is an angler?"
It seemed disaster still clogged my mind, but what had already happened was new and wonderful. Half a mile below us I saw the angler still fighting the tuna he had hooked. I wanted him to get it, but I hoped he would be all afternoon on the job. "Hurry, Cap!" was all I said. Ordinarily Dan is the swiftest of boatmen. To-day he was slower than molasses and all he did went wrong.
At length Victory declared in favour of the feathered angler, who, bearing away for the nearest shore, landed on the smooth green grass one of the finest pike ever caught in the Castle Loch." This adventure is said to have cured the gander of his desperate propensity for wandering.
Walton's "Compleat Angler," London, 1st ed. 1653, a little book of only 250 pages, sold for £310 in 1891. It was published for one shilling and sixpence. The first edition of Robinson Crusoe brought £75 at the Crampton sale in 1896. The rage for first editions of very modern books reached what might be called high-water mark some time since, and has been on the decline.
For the mansion of M. Jalais stood in an elbow of the little river, and one window of this room showed the curve of tidal water widening towards the sea, while the other pleasantly gave eye to the upper reaches of the stream, where an angler of rose-coloured mind might almost hope to hook a trout.
To the "Angler's Delight" this same W. Gilbert added a tract on "The Hackney River, and the best stands there." Now there are no stands there, except cabstands, which of course are uninteresting to the angler. Two hundred years have put his fishing far away from him. However, the ancient longing lives in him, and the Sunday morning trains from Paddington are full of early fishing-men.
"You're a lucky man to-day, Dick," murmured the enthusiastic angler to himself, as he jogged across the field. Had he known what was in store for him, however, he would have arrived at a very different estimate of his fortunes! The field, as we have said, was a large one.
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