There is something superhuman about such conduct.
Now, it is impossible and would be ungrateful to doubt the correctness of the weighing machine used by a fisherman so notable as is Chavender. It would also be idiotic. I have accepted his verdict upon my balance without a murmur.
So I have been catching great fishes all summer. I have been returning to their stream trouts a pound and a half heavy as beneath my consideration, and only the greatest anglers do this. My rare two-pounders have been two-and-a-half-pounders, and as all two-and-a-half-pounders really weigh three, three pounds has been the actual weight of these fishes. Yes, I have been enjoying my sport far more than I have done. I am vastly beholden to Chavender. And I find that I must revise the sport of a lifetime. Mine is an old weighing machine, and surely it is reasonable to suppose that the older a spring is the slacker it gets. Now all my fishes have been weighed on this spring. Who knows how grossly it was out five or six years ago. I daresay as much as a pound or a pound and a half. This proves some of the fishes which I caught in those days to have been colossal. Hitherto I have boasted of nothing heavier than three pounds. I can safely call that greatest trout a four-and-a-half-pounder. If not five.
