emost writers always say, when
they do not see how to go on with them,--but it is a serious thing to
know what Crocker's Hole was like; because at a time when (if he had
only persevered, and married the maid, and succeeded to the oven, and
reared a large family of short-weight bakers) he might have been leaning
on his crutch beside the pool, and teaching his grandson to swim by
precept (that beautiful proxy for practice)--at such a time, I
say, there lived a remarkably fine trout in that hole. Anglers are
notoriously truthful, especially as to what they catch, or even more
frequently have not caught. Though I may have written fiction, among
many other sins,--as a nice old lady told me once,--now I have to deal
with facts; and foul scorn would I count it ever to make believe that I
caught that fish. My length at that time was not more than the butt of
a four-jointed rod, and all I could catch was a minnow with a pin,
which our cook Lydia would not cook, but used to say, "Oh, what a shame,
Master Richard! they would have been trout in the summer, please God! if
you would only a' let 'em grow on." She is living now, and will bear me
out in this.

But upon every great occasion there arises a great man; or to put it
more accurately, in the present instance, a mighty and distinguished
boy. My father, being the parson of the parish, and getting, need it
be said, small pay, took sundry pupils, very pleasant fellows, about to
adorn the universities. Among them was the original "Bude Light," as he
was satirically called at Cambridge, for he came from Bude, and there
was no light in him. Among them also was John Pike, a born Zebedee, if
ever there was one.

John Pike was a thick-set younker, with a large and bushy head, keen
blue eyes that could see through water, and the proper slouch of
shoulder into which great anglers ripen; but greater still are born with
it; and of these was Master John. It mattered little what the weather
was, and scarcely more as to the time of year, John Pike must have his
fishing every day, and on Sundays he read about it, and made flies. All
the rest of the time he was thinking about it.

My father was coaching him in the fourth book of the AEneid and all those
wonderful speeches of Dido, where passion disdains construction; but the
only line Pike cared for was of horsehair. "I fear, Mr. Pike, that you
are not giving me your entire attention," my father used to say in his
mild dry way; and once when