Angling sketches . and mica-veined rocks, and the sunlight on a shining bendof a highland stream, and my father, standing inthe shallow water, showing me a huge yellow fish,that gave its last iling or two on the grassy fish seemed as terrible and dangerous to meas to Tobit, in the Apocrypha, did that ferocioushalf-pounder which he carries on a string in theearly Italian pictures. How oddly Botticelli andhis brethren misconceived the man-devouring fish,which must have been a crocodile strayed from theNile into the waters of the Euphrates! A half-pounder ! To have been terrified by a tr
Angling sketches . and mica-veined rocks, and the sunlight on a shining bendof a highland stream, and my father, standing inthe shallow water, showing me a huge yellow fish,that gave its last iling or two on the grassy fish seemed as terrible and dangerous to meas to Tobit, in the Apocrypha, did that ferocioushalf-pounder which he carries on a string in theearly Italian pictures. How oddly Botticelli andhis brethren misconceived the man-devouring fish,which must have been a crocodile strayed from theNile into the waters of the Euphrates! A half-pounder ! To have been terrified by a trout 12 AXGLTXC SKETCHES seems a bad beginning ; and, thereafter, the mistgathers over the past, onl\- to hft again when I seemyself, with a crowd of other Httle children, sent tofish, with crooked pins, for minnows, or baggies as we called them, in the Ettrick. If our parentshoped that we would bring home minnows for bait,the\- were disappointed. The part)- was under thecommand of a nursery governess, and probable-. she was no descendant of the mother of us Juliana Berners. \^e did not catch anyminnows, and I remember sitting to watch a biggerboy, who was angling in a shoal of them when aparr came into the shoal, and we had bright visionsof alluring that monarch of the deep. But theparr disdained our baits, and for months I dreamedof what it would have been to capture him, and A BORDER BOYHOOD 13 often thought of him in church. In a moment ofprofane confidence my younger brother once askedme : What do you do in sermon time? I, said hein a whisper—mind you dont tell—/ tell storiesto myself about catching trout. To which I addeda similar confession, for even so I drove the ser-mon by, and I have not told —till now. By this time we must have been introduced totrout. Who forgets his first trout ? Mine, thanksto that unlucky star, was a double deception, orrather there were two kinds of deception. Avillage carpenter very kindly made rods for were of unpainted
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Keywords: ., bookauthorla, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectfishing
