hich the Egyptian Cleopatra fooled that
far-famed Roman wight, Marc Antony, when they were angling together on
the Nile. As I recall it, from a perusal in early boyhood, Antony was
having very bad luck indeed; in fact he had taken nothing, and was sadly
put out about it. Cleopatra, thinking to get a rise out of him, secretly
told one of her attendants to dive over the opposite side of the barge
and fasten a salt fish to the Roman general's hook. The attendant was
much pleased with this commission, and, having executed it, proceeded to
add a fine stroke of his own; for when he had made the fish fast on the
hook, he gave a great pull to the line and held on tightly. Antony was
much excited and began to haul violently at his tackle.

"By Jupiter!" he exclaimed, "it was long in coming, but I have a
colossal bite now."

"Have a care," said Cleopatra, laughing behind her sunshade, "or he will
drag you into the water. You must give him line when he pulls hard."

"Not a denarius will I give!" rudely responded Antony. "I mean to have
this halibut or Hades!"

At this moment the man under the boat, being out of breath, let the line
go, and Antony, falling backward, drew up the salted herring.

"Take that fish off the hook, Palinurus," he proudly said. "It is not
as large as I thought, but it looks like the oldest one that has been
caught to-day."

Such, in effect, is the tale narrated by the veracious Plutarch. And
if any careful critic wishes to verify my quotation from memory, he may
compare it with the proper page of Langhorne's translation; I think it
is in the second volume, near the end.

Sir Walter Scott, who once described himself as

"No fisher,
But a well-wisher
To the game,"

has an amusing passage of angling in the third chapter of REDGAUNTLET.
Darsie Latimer is relating his adventures in Dumfriesshire. "By the
way," says he, "old Cotton's instructions, by which I hoped to qualify
myself for the gentle society of anglers, are not worth a farthing for
this meridian. I learned this by mere accident, after I had waited four
mortal hours. I shall never forget an impudent urchin, a cowherd, about
twelve years old, without either brogue or bonnet, barelegged, with a
very indifferent pair of breeches,--how the villain grinned in scorn at
my landing-net, my plummet, and the gorgeous jury of flies which I had
assembled to destroy all the fish in the river. I was induced at last to
lend the rod t