Leaving the contestants, we walked down to the lake in front of the mansion, and with our usual good fortune we were just in time to see the twenty acres of ornamental water dragged for pike, which play such havoc with other fish. The water had been drained into a small pond, which seemed alive with bewildered fish. We sat and watched with quiet interest the men drawing the net. Hundreds were caught at every haul, from which the pike were taken. A tremendous eel gave the men a lively chase; three or four times it escaped, wriggled through their legs and hands one after the other, and made for the water. Had the gamekeeper not succeeded in pinning it to the ground with a pitchfork, the eel would have beaten the whole party.
Adam and Eve.
Lord Vernon's park is rich in attractions. An old narrow picturesque arched bridge, which spans the pretty lake, has a statue of Adam at one end and Eve at the other. Over the former the ivy clusters so thickly as to make our great prototype a mass of living green; poor Eve has been less favored, for she is in a pitiable plight for a woman, with "nothing to wear."
But Eve was not used to kind treatment. Adam was by no means a modern model husband, and never gave Eve anything in excess except blame. Here she is still, the Flora McFlimsy of my friend William Allen Butler (minus the flora as I have said); but let her be patient, her dress is sure to come, for kind nature in England abhors nakedness. She is ever at work clothing everything with her mantle of green.
"Ever and ever bringing secrets forth,
It sitteth in the green of forest glades
Nursing strange seedlings at the cedar's root,
Devising leaves, blooms, blades.
This is its touch upon the blossomed rose,