ful exponent may carry away from the stream he bestows upon the deserving poor or distributes as graceful compliments by post among his last winter's hostesses. It is fashionable to despise the flesh of trouts. "After," your more pernicious kind of angler will say, "I have weighed my fish, or grassed him, or fairly hooked him, or risen him"—his choice among these moments depending on the stage of refinement to which he has advanced—"I have no further interest in him. As for eating him, Heaven forbid! Give me a cod steak and oyster sauce."
Like so much of what is said nowadays, this kind of talk is extremely artificial. It is born of long purses and full stomachs. Civilisation is made up of such things. We have to get to grips with nature to discover their essential falsity. All this clothing of sportsmanship, entomology, phrenology, contemplativeness, gentleness, and even humour, in which we have learned to dress up fishing cannot serve to conceal from the penetrating eye the original simple, sincere attempt of the carnivorous animal to fill his belly.
My wife appeared with a white face, one hand flung forth despairingly, a telegram clutched in it. "Those men," she said, meaning Chavender and Wickham, whom again we expected, "will be here at half-past six—not half-past nine, as they
