CHAPTER XII.

SOME REMINISCENCES OF OLD FRIENDS.

Did ever any one see the like! What a heap of trumpery is here; and since I find you an honest man, I will make no scruples in laying my treasures before you. - [Charles Cotton.

N taking down my store of angling implements from their winter's repose, I found them as I had left them, after a long siege of service. They were as welcome as the faces of old friends; and the older the more welcome. There was the identical "silver doctor" with which I took my first salmon last year-dim and frayed from hard service, but more precious from association than all its score of gaudy companions. What any fly would do, under any circumstances, for any one, that fly did for me. Whether in sunshine or cloud-whether in untried waters or where each ripple, rock and eddy were as familiar as household words whether, when no breeze disturbed the silvery surface of

the river or when the storm howled all around me - always and in all places it was true to its office. We sometimes have such friends, and because some such have been brought to mind by this tiny memento of forest life, I will place it on the retired list, lest it should disappoint me should I again test it, and so the pleasant memories I have of it be dimmed by the recollection of a single failure. Even friendship may get weary, and he is wise who never overtasks it.

Here is another memento a Limerick hook, which proved a faithful friend in all waters for many years. I took I took my first trout with it in 1853, from a mill-pond not far from Coburg in Canada. The water was as transparent as the atmosphere. I had whipped every inch of it in vain. Not a fish would rise to any fly I could muster. In despair I had resort to bait, and dropping my line into deep water within a few feet of a sunken brush-heap, I was startled on seeing coming out from beneath it, with a sedate and complacent gravity, a massive and graceful trout, evidently quite intent upon the tempting lure which I had placed before him. But he moved very slowly, as if confident that what his eye was fixed upon could not escape him; and as if, like an experienced epicure, he was determined to enjoy in anticipation the feast which he was sure of, he smacked

his lips, as trout often do, and dashed at last for the bait. I struck him on the instant, but too soon. I knew he was badly hooked, and felt that to save him would require most careful handling. The bank upon which I stood was three or four feet above the water, and the water two yards from the bank was twenty feet in depth. After a struggle of ten minutes, I saw that with the delicate hold I had of him it would be impossible either to kill or lift him, and having neither landing net nor gaff, JAMES WILD- who as a lookeron was even more excited than myself - begged of me to lead the fish close to the bank, when he could, he thought, by taking the line near the hook, slide him out of the water in safety. I was afraid of the experiment and suggested my hat as a substitute for a landing net; but he, as he always is, was sanguine of success and I submitted. Never was fish led more delicately, and he followed my lead as kindly as a pet lamb, until I held him within three feet of WILD's stand-point. Seizing the line, and poising himself with artistic precision, he slid the beautiful creature out of the water nearly to the top of the bank, when the hook was disengaged, and, with a single shake of his tail, as if in defiance, he plunged back into his native element, and I after him! Seeing that the momentum which W. gave him was not sufficient

to save him, I instinctively threw myself forward to scoop him up, but failed, and found myself the next instant coming up myself through the pure water into which I had plunged in my fruitless efforts to save the fish! WILD never moved a

muscle, but pointing to a spot a few rods distant, quietly suggested to me to "swim yonder; it's a good place to get out at!" He has never offered to land a fish for me from that day to this.

I have other pleasant recollections of this Limerick. Trees have been climbed, brooks have been forded, and stout garments have been cut, to preserve it; and here it is to-day, good as new and ready for instant service. I shall preserve it as an heir-loom, and it shall go down to posterity with my "silver doctor" certified, under my hand and seal, as a friend who never failed me.

And here is a Reel, with every movement out of gear and quite as unfit for service as a broken rod. And yet I would as soon think of burning the letters of an old friend as to throw it away; for I never look at it without having come up before me a thousand pleasant reminiscences of angling waters in the Canadas, in Wisconsin, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and the lakes and rivers which make an angler's paradise of our own northern forests. It rendered its first service in the waters of the Chateaugay lakes-once famous as the best