ket, while we were
moralising, has abstracted our Lascelles! We may as well tie a stone to
each of our feet, and sink away from all sense of misery in the Salmon
Pool. Oh! that it had been our purse! Who cares for a dozen dirty
sovereigns and a score of nasty notes? And what's the use of them to us
now, or indeed at any time? And what's the use of this identical rod?
Hang it, if a little thing would not make us break it! A multiplying
reel, indeed! The invention of a fool. The Tent sees not us again; this
afternoon we shall return to Edinburgh. Don't talk to us of flies at the
next village. There are no flies at the village--there is no village. O
Beelzebub! O Satan! was ever man tempted as we are tempted? See--see a
Fish--a fine Fish--an enormous Fish--leaping to insult us! Give us our
gun that we may shoot him--no--no, dang guns--and dang this great clumsy
rod! There--let it lie there for the first person that passes--for we
swear never to angle more. As for the Awe, we never liked it--and wonder
what infatuation brought us here. We shall be made to pay for this
yet--whew! there was a twinge--that big toe of ours we'll warrant is as
red as fire, and we bitterly confess that we deserve the gout. Och! och!
och!

But hark! whoop and hollo, and is that too the music of the hunter's
horn? Reverberating among the woods a well-known voice salutes our ear;
and there! bounds Hamish over the rocks like a chamois taking his
pastime. Holding up our LASCELLES! he places it with a few respectful
words--hoping we have not missed it--and standing aloof--leaves us to
our own reflections and our flies. Nor do those amount to remorse--nor
these to more than a few dozens. Samson's strength having been
restored--we speak of our rod, mind ye, not of ourselves--we lift up our
downcast eyes, and steal somewhat ashamed a furtive glance at the trees
and stones that must have overheard and overseen all our behaviour. We
leave those who have been in anything like the same predicament to
confess--not publicly--there is no occasion for that--nor on their
knees--but to their own consciences, if they have any, their grief and
their joy, their guilt, and, we hope, their gratitude. Transported
though they were beyond all bounds, we forgive them; for even those
great masters of wisdom, the Stoics, were not infallible, nor were they
always able to sustain, at their utmost strength, in practice the
principles of their philosophy.

Phin! this Rod is thy