the delights of talking shop dear to anglers Most sporting talk is dull to every one but the votaries of the particular amusement.  Few things can be drearier to the outsider than the conversation of cricketers, unless it be the recondite lore which whist-players bring forth from the depths of their extraordinary memories.  But angling talk has a variety, recounts an amount of incident and adventure, and wakens a feeling of free air in a way with which the records of no other sport, except perhaps deer-stalking, can compete.  The salmon is, beyond all rivalry, the strongest and most beautiful, and most cautious and artful, of fresh-water fishes.  To capture him is not a task for slack muscles or an uncertain eye.  There is even a slight amount of personal risk in the sport.  The fisher must often wade till the water reaches above the waist in cold and rushing streams, where his feet are apt to slip on the smooth stones or trip on the rough rocks beneath him.  When the salmon takes the fly, there is no time for picking steps.  The line rushes out so swiftly as to cut the fingers if it touches them, and then is the moment when the angler must follow the fish at the top of his speed.  To stand still, or to go cautiously in pursuit, is to allow the salmon to run out with an enormous length of line; the line is submerged—­technically speaking, drowned—­in the water, the strain of the supple rod is removed from the fish, who finds the hook loose in his mouth, and rubs it off against the bottom of the river.  Thus speed of foot, in water or over rocks, is a necessary quality in the angler; at least in the northern angler.  By the banks of the Usk a contemplative man who likes to take things easily may find pretty sure footing on grassy slopes, or on a gravelly bottom.  But it is a different thing to hook a large salmon where the Tweed foams under the bridge of Yair down to the narrows and linns below.  If the angler hesitates there, he is lost.  Does he stand still and give the fish line?  The astute creature cuts it against the sharp rocks below the bridge, and the rod, relieved of the weight, leaps straight in the fisher’s hand, and in his heart there is a sense of emptiness and sudden desolation.  Does he try to follow, the chances are that his feet slip; after one or two wild struggles he is on his back in the water, and nearly strangled with his fishing-basket.  In either case the fish goes on his way rejoicing, and, after the manner of his kind, leaps out of the water once or twice—­a maddening sight.

Adventures like this are among the bitter memories of the angler.  The fish that break away are monstrous animals; imagination increases their bulk, and fond desire paints them clean-run and bright as silver.  There are other chances of the angler’s life scarcely less sad than this.  When a hook breaks just as the salmon was losing strength, was ceasing to struggle, and beginning to sway with the mere force of the stream, and to show his shining