miserable and wasting old age, of starvation. For this is the undoubted end of all such creatures as escape destruction at the fangs of their fellows. Thus we defend fox-hunting, thus hare-coursing, thus the pheasant battue. At first sight the argument seems unanswerable. It is certainly best to die quickly. But to live long—that, too, is good. There, I feel, is a sort of point of view. I know it is a foolish one, but it sticks in my mind.
Away from the river I can see the force of all these observations. But on the bank they have less force. Perhaps I put my head carefully over a bank, and there, not six feet below my eyes, is a trout, a great golden-green fellow in the prime of his splendid life. Three pounds he weighs (when I grass him). He has won gallantly through the perils of his fishing days, swimming faster, exercising more wariness, feeding harder than the others of his year. And now, one out of—what is it, a hundred thousand?—two hundred million?—that have succumbed, he lies there in the sunlight just above cool emerald weeds, sucking in the sweet little duns as his bountiful stream carries them above his head. With what ease he keeps his place against the rapid current; with what whole-hearted, admirable gluttonry he gulps his breakfast; what a gorgeous, lithe, perfect animal is this that I would strike into hideous rigidity.
