is was enough for me, whose piscatorial
propensities threaten, I am afraid, to be as enduring as those of
Paley; and laying aside our loads, which had already been buckled on,
we restored them to their places in the chamber. But the astonishment
of the innkeeper, aye, and of all his household beside, when I
exhibited to him my rod, line, and book of flies, no language is
adequate to describe. Such things had never come under their admiring
gaze before, and their shouts and exclamations were quite amusing. It
would have been cruel, after all this, not to give them a specimen of
the style in which we insular anglers coax trout to their destruction;
so having ordered supper to be ready at eight, and sent a message to
the postmaster that I would be glad if he could come and take part of
it with us, we sallied forth, under the conduct of our host, in search
of the stream.

The first glance which we obtained of this said stream sufficed to
assure us that in the gentle craft, the good people of Gabel were
altogether unpractised. There was no stream at all, but a ditch, deep,
here and there, and dark enough, but measuring not more than two feet
across, and everywhere overhung with bushes. They assured me that it
was full of fine trout, and I have no reason to doubt them. But as I
could not bring myself to adopt their method of catching the said
trout, namely, by tying a cord to the end of a stick, and a hook, with
a miserable worm on its blade, to the end of the string, my fishing
this day amounted to nothing. Yet the day was, on the whole, very
agreeably spent, as the following detail will show.

Our host, a fine handsome man of perhaps forty years of age, with a
quick eye, and singularly intelligent gestures, informed me, as we set
out from home, that I should find, at the water's side, the same
Austrian officer who had sat at our table over-night, "For he is a keen
sportsman," added he, "and having no other employment, devotes almost
all his mornings either to angling or shooting." I was not sorry to be
told this, because I naturally concluded that a stream which could
afford amusement all the summer over to one fisherman, so determined,
would furnish me with sufficient sport for a single day. My
astonishment may, therefore, be conceived, when on stepping over, what
I mistook for a drain, our host pointed upwards, and exclaimed, "Aye,
there he is, hard at it. He's an excellent fisherman, and would die, I
really believe, we