of tea. Bananas! while Chavender gurgles with tea. Oh! I detest favouritism.
I wonder what the fellow's nerves are like. While he sits there drinking I could cheerfully see him opened up by the medical men who would tell me. "If this much stimulant," I ask myself, "only serves to bedew the eyelids of Chavender with the balmiest of sleep, what would happen were he deprived of it? It is clear that he would never wake up at all. And then his companionship would be lost to us. So I comfort myself for the partiality of the tea-dispenser.
I have said that Chavender always catches fish in this river. He employs honourable methods. He is, therefore, a good fisherman. This conclusion is open to objection, as thus. It is not certain that a man may not be a good fisherman and yet catch few fish. A good fisherman is one who fishes well. Results have nothing to do with it.
I reply that results have everything to do with it. A man who fishes well without catching fish is a contradiction in terms. Mechanical skill in the casting of flies may be acquired on a water that is quite empty of fishes. Similarly, a man may learn by heart all the practical hints of all the anglers who have ever written until there is nothing he cannot tell you about barbel-bait and the respective merits of gorge and snap-tackle for
