the size of a pen-wiper, over the nose of a fifteen-pounder that had
already once risen to the gaudy lure.

Poising himself, like a Mercury, on a rock in mid-stream, the angler
had just thrown eighteen yards of line lightly as a silken thread
to an inch, when his foot slipped, and a loud splash, bringing the
painter, like Icarus, out of the clouds with a run, startled his
attention to the place where his companion was not. In another second
Simon had his grip on Dick's collar, and both men were struggling for
dear life in the pool. Stanmore could swim, of course, but it takes
a good swimmer to hold his own in fisherman's boots, encumbered,
moreover, with sundry paraphernalia of his art. Simon was a very mild
performer in the water, but he had coolness, presence of mind, and
inflexible tenacity of purpose. To these qualities the friends owed it
that they ever reached the shore alive. It was a very near thing,
and when they found their legs and looked into each other's faces,
gasping, dripping, spouting water from ears, nose, and mouth, Dick
gathered breath to exclaim, "You trump! I should have been drowned,
to a moral!" Whereat the other, choking, coughing, and sputtering,
answered faintly, "You old muff! I believe we were never out of our
depth the whole time!"

Perkins did not go up for his degree, and the men lost sight of one
another in a few years, cherishing, indeed, a kindly remembrance each
of his friend, yet taking little pains to refresh that remembrance by
renewed intercourse. How many intimacies, how many attachments outlast
a twelvemonth's break? There are certain things people go on caring
for, but I fear they are more intimately connected with self in daily
life than either the romance of friendship or the intermittent fever
of love. The enjoyment of luxury, the pursuit of money-making, seem to