A day on any water, from Galashiels down to the last pool
below Coldstream, is exceeding precious at this time of the year.
Every boat is apportioned for the riparian owners and their friends to
the very end of the season. If, therefore, you have had kindly leave
to fish any of these celebrated waters, and have been unable through
bad weather to live up to the opportunities, I could almost weep with
or for you; or, if you think strong language more manly, I would make
an effort for once to meet you on that ground. I speak, alas, from the
book. The wounds inflicted by jade Fortune in these regards are yet
unhealed. Take, then, your very off-chance and be thankful.

The truth is that you never quite know what will happen in salmon
fishing. On that drenching Saturday, when you were working like a
galley slave without raising or seeing a fish on the Lower Floors water
(where Lord Randolph Churchill subsequently slew his four fish), did
not Mr. Gilbey take five at Carham and Mr. Arkwright four at Birgham?
On the Monday, when the water was a little better, did you not find
that the salmon had moved right away from the beat for which you were
that day booked? It was surely so; and the only sport obtained was by
a young gentleman who had handled a rod for the first time on the
previous Friday, and who now happened upon a 25-lb. fish, the only one
killed that day, with the exception of a pound yellow trout, which took
your own fly--a Silver Doctor 1 1/2 in. long. This, and a couple of
false rises from salmon, constituted your only luck. Yet there were
salmon and grilse in all the streams, splashing in the slow oily sweep
that crept under the wood yonder.

It was consolation that night to discover that not much had been done
anywhere. A gossip in Mr. Forrest's shop had heard that the Duke of
Roxburghe had killed a couple, and the Duchess, who fishes fair with a
good salmon rod and casts the fly in a masterly style, also a brace.
Mr. Drummond, up at the meeting point of Teviot and Tweed, had done
something also. That night, too, the gallant General arrived from
Tayside, to make your mouth water as he, being cross-examined as to
sport, elaborated the record which had appeared in Saturday's _Field_.
If there is any wrinkle in salmon fishing that the General does not
know, you would like to hear of it, would you not? Mark his artful
little plan of using the common safety-pin of commerce for stringing
his flies upon, thr