the cowboy who called in Crummy from the water mead. The very drunkards, had there been any there, would have made songs upon him, as they did upon the psalmist. Personally I never could understand what either of the men had in common with the other to draw them thus together, and yet they fished our neighbourhood with tameless ardour and amity and since they usually met close to my house, I made it a habit to call out a cheery good morning and to ask them how each had fared last time. I noted the answers carefully down in a book. At the end of the season Sir Edward had taken but one fish to Eleazar's three, and only one fifth of the total weight of their joint catch. Sir Edward is a thoroughly good-natured fellow and assures me that his friend is both clever and lucky at the craft. Eleazar, on the contrary, thinks that his constant success is rather due to his homespun tackle and careless neglect of the brilliant and glittering notions of the shops, which catch nothing but the angler's guineas. He begs me to consider that in the matter of pike, he has often had to call in his friend's landing net at least "to save time," and that one of his rods has twice been lf broken and last time was discharged from bankruptcy with a mere second-class certificate; whereas the other man reports of himself that he has only broken a top, lost another, and spoiled a few pounds worth of tackle. Eleazar too much "fights to win." He never wastes time over mere conjectural notions. He is bigotedly conservative. this or that fails, he will have none of your Colorado beetle baits, spiral tins, trout-skin phantoms. There is no fish that swims which will always refuse a large red and yellow lob worm, he says. says. These, with brandlings, small dace, minnows and pastes are his only friends in our streams. He cares little for dock worms, creepers or caddis, and yet is so careless, that in the summer he trusts to stones, hedges and nettle beds to find him in baits, when other things give out. I heard with much curiosity that Sir Edward had rented a fine trout stream about five miles away and was driving over there, taking his friend, once or twice a week. I was favoured with a sight of Sir Edward's hold-all, and he was kind enough to show me his flies of 76 varieties, wonderful to behold. I noticed that he had green drakes with cork bodies, stone flies, exquis itely realist, Alexandras of great luxuriance, spiders of many sorts on treble casts. (1) The book cost him, flies and casts (2) A new split-cane rod with electro-plated nonsense about it (3) An absurd aluminium reel 550 4 4 0 1 4 0 1 16 0 Total £18 15 0 his ex He congratulated himself upon treme moderation and ascetic sternness. Eleazar rose to the occasion and spent Upon a 9ft. greenheart, cork handled 0 18 0 One metal winch, optional check 0 4 0 A plaited silk-and-hair blow Somebody also gave him a landing net. He made a fly book for himself with some sheets of parchment and an old letter case. His flies were home made, mostly I think by his pretty daughter, and were of thirteen varieties only, including May flies. They had very little red in them, except the red ant; indeed, they were mostly clad obfusca veste, in sober and almost clerical attire. The Palmer and Greenwell looked quite conspicuous in this Quakerish assembly. I watched with impatience for the return of the dog cart whenever the friends went out, and wrote down the tale of the sport. At the end of the first month Sir Edward had in number three fish to the good, while Eleazar had secured the largest nearly every time; the very finest of all having been secured upon a nondescript fly made from a Plymouth Rock's feather, picked up in the inn yard. From constant experience I conclude, in despite of commercial writers, that an angler may be efficiently equipped for quite a moderate sum, and that vain, fussy, competitive persons, or careless and thoughtless ones, who fling away their money upon useless luxuries, would be better anglers as G well as better men, if they set up a mark of simplicity in their lives and looked askance at luxury. This good Sir Edward, for he is a good man, pleads that he cannot find the money to repair certain of his cottages, has reduced his subscriptions to charities and made other retrenchments in his estate, not without apology to our mild-eyed curate. Eleazar, on the other hand, always seems to have a guinea ready for a special case in the villages round, though he hardly ever has one for himself, and when the publishers pay him for his midnight oil, you can always tell that they have done so, for the old ladies in the almshouse invite their relatives to hot suppers. This is the true μeyaλоπρéπeia, magnificence of expenditure, and not that nonsense of Polonius, "Costly thy habit, as thy purse can buy." A man who could thus advise upon tailoring, would very naturally also give that cruel, inorganic and bruising metaphor, to grapple our friends to us "with hooks of steel," fine instruments no doubt for taking corpses out of whirlpools,—but a friendship, like the grayling, is made very tender mouthed, and not to be grappled violently with steel hooks. The angler's outfit, then, will be as simple |