more cunning, more science, and therefore more pleasant excitement,
in 'foxing' a great fish out of a stop-hole, than in whipping far and
wide over an open stream, where a half-pounder is a wonder and a
triumph. As for physical exertion, you will be able to compute for
yourself how much your back, knees, and fore-arm will ache by nine
o'clock to-night, after some ten hours of this scrambling, splashing,
leaping, and kneeling upon a hot June day. This item in the day's
work will of course be put to the side of loss or of gain, according
to your temperament: but it will cure you of an inclination to laugh
at us Wessex chalk-fishers as Cockneys.

So we will wander up the streams, taking a fish here and a fish
there, till--Really it is very hot. We have the whole day before us;
the fly will not be up till five o'clock at least; and then the real
fishing will begin. Why tire ourselves beforehand? The squire will
send us luncheon in the afternoon, and after that expect us to fish
as long as we can see, and come up to the hall to sleep, regardless
of the ceremony of dressing. For is not the green drake on? And
while he reigns, all hours, meals, decencies, and respectabilities
must yield to his caprice. See, here he sits, or rather tens of
thousands of him, one on each stalk of grass--green drake, yellow
drake, brown drake, white drake, each with his gauzy wings folded
over his back, waiting for some unknown change of temperature, or
something else, in the afternoon, to wake him from his sleep, and
send him fluttering over the stream; while overhead the black drake,
who has changed his skin and reproduced his species, dances in the
sunshine, empty, hard, and happy, like Festus Bailey's Great Black
Crow, who all his life sings 'Ho, ho, ho,'