eturning from where the merry
rowers dined so well in training, and after a pleasant and cool walk
"home" by the river side, there was the little yawl all safe on a glassy
pool, and her deck shining spangled with dewdrops under the moon, and the
cabin snug within,--airy but no draughts, cool without chill, and
brightly lighted up in a moment, yet all so undisturbed, without dust or
din, and without any bill to pay.

Awake with the earliest sun, there was always the same sound alongside as
we lay at anchor. The sweet murmurings of the water running by, cleft by
my sharp bow, and gliding in wavelets along the smooth sides only a few
inches from my ear, and sounding with articulate distinctness through the
tight mahogany skin; and then there was the muttering chatter of the
amateur fisherman, who was sure to be at his post, however early.

This respectable personage, not young but still hearty, is in his own
boat,--a boat perfectly respectable too, and well found in all
particulars, flat, brown, broad, utterly useless for anything but this
its duty every morning.

Quietly his anchor is dropped, and he then fixes a pole into the bottom
of the river, and lashes the boat to that, and to that it will be fixed
until nine o'clock; at present it is five. He puts on a grey coat, and
brown hat, and blue spectacles, all the colours of man and boat being
philosophically arranged, and as part of a complicated and secret plot
upon the liberties of that unseen, mysterious, and much-considered
_goujon_ which is poetically imagined to be below. It has baffled all
designs for this last week, for it is a wily monster, but _this_ morning
it is most certainly to be snared.

Rod, line, float, hook, bait, are all prepared for the conflict, and the
fisherman now seats himself steadily in a sort of arm-chair, and with
stealth and gravity drops the deceitful line into hidden deeps. At that
float he will stare till he cannot see. He looks contented; at any rate,
no muscle moves in his face, though envy may be corroding his soul.
After an hour he _may_ just yield so much as to mutter some few sounds,
or a suppressed moaning over his hard lot, 'and that is what I hear in my
cabin.' Then at last he rises with a determined briskness in his mien,
and the resentment against fate from an ill-used man, and he casts
exactly three handfuls of corn or bread-crumbs into the water, these to
beguile the reluctant obstinate gudgeon, who, perhaps, poor th