bowed low before him, and departed severally in search of plaster-of-Paris. A new era had dawned for anglers. Since that day in order to be a great fisherman it has been necessary to hang great casts on the wall.
Now if a man shows me a fish—a large dead fish—which he takes from his creel at the end of the day, I am prepared to hold it a convincing proof of his skill. I do not know how he came by it. I do not know if it was caught on a dry olive or with a worm or with a stroke-hall, whatever that may be. He may have bought it from a boy. He may have charmed it out to him on the bank with the music of the flageolet for all I care. I do not ask these things. He has a fish. I can handle it and recognise it for a fish by its touch and its appearance and its fishy smell, or, if it be a grayling, by its delicious odour of wild thyme. I am content. If his fish is bigger than any of mine, I tell him of one much bigger than his which broke me just after I began in the morning, when my gut was not thoroughly soaked. Yet I own frankly that he is an angler and I take off my hat to him.
But a plaster cast is a different affair. On its evidence I would rather hang its owner than yield him a tittle of respect. A plaster cast represents to me nothing but so much coin expended. If I had enough money I could have a cast as big as
