Finding yourself reduced to the necessity of talking about the beautiful form and colour of some trout, which you have caught, being well aware that in the important particular of weight, they are much inferior to several of those taken on the same day by one of your companions.
XXXI.
Telling a long story after dinner, tending to show (with full particulars of time and place) how that, under very difficult circumstances, and notwithstanding very great skill on your part, your tackle had been that morning broken and carried away by a very large fish; and then having the identical fly, lost by you on that occasion, returned to you by one of your party, who found it in the mouth of a trout, caught by him, about an hour after your disaster, on the very spot so accurately described by you—the said very large fish being, after all, a very small one.
XXXII.
Arriving at a friend's house in the country, one very cold evening in March, and being told by his keeper that there are a great many large pike in the water, and that you are sure of having good sport on the following day; and then looking out of your bed-room window the next morning, and seeing two unhappy swans dancing an awkward sort of minuet on the ice, the surface of the lake having been completely frozen during the night.
R. P.
London,
March, 1833.
