stand in no
need whatsoever?

Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among the
Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are grey, under the wise new
fishing-laws?--when Winchester apprentices shall covenant, as they did
three hundred years ago, not to be made to eat salmon more than three
days a week; and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under Salisbury
spire as they are in Holly-hole at Christchurch; in the good time
coming, when folks shall see that, of all Heaven's gifts of food, the
one to be protected most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon, who
is generous enough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to
come back next year weighing five pounds, without having cost the soil
or the state one farthing?

Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur Clough drew in his
"Bothie":--

_"Where over a ledge of granite
Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended. . . .
Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under;
Beautiful most of all, where beads of foam uprising
Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the
stillness. . . .
Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendant birch
boughs." . . ._

Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as
that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full
spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling
at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the
cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or
whether the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below
be as white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle
together in one dark cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their
time till the rain creeps back again off the sea. You will not care
much, if you have eyes and brains; for you will lay down your rod
contentedly, and drink in at your eyes the beauty of that glorious
place; and listen to the water-ouzel piping on the stones, and watch the
yellow roes come down to drink and look up at you with their great soft
trustful eyes, as much as to say, "You could not have the heart to shoot
at us?" And then, if you have sense, you will turn and talk to the great
giant of a gilly who lies basking on the stone beside you. He will tell
you no fibs, my little man; for he is a Scotchman, and fears God, and
not the priest; and, as you talk wi