Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Part I. THE GUDGEON I BEGIN with the gudgeon. Why ? Because, as a much-respected and very wealthy friend of mine, formerly a tradesman, remarked, in explanation of his refusal to visit a captain on half pay, who, covered with scars and glory, supported his rank, his wife, and four children on £300 a year—" One must draw the line somewhere." I draw mine at gudgeon, otherwise I would fain give the little urchins who sometimes fish for minnows and fry in the Serpentine with crooked pins some hints for their guidance. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, and the pin might be bent more artistically, more scientifically; the broken match which does duty for a float might—but Iabstain. One dogma only will I enunciate, and that more for the benefit of the owners of aquaria than that of the little arabs. If you wish to transport your minnows, especially in hot weather, from one place to another, fill the bottle halfiM. of water, insert the fish, and cork it tightly down. Of course, this is all against philosophy, analogy, and so forth, but it is the true method. I have proved it. Now for the gudgeon. Gudgeon-fishing may be considered as the very accidence of the grammar of fishing, and, unless with the minnows I have referred to, I could hardly commence lower in the scale than with the phase of Thames angling known as " gudgeon-fishing." Reader! do not curl your lip in scorn! Thames angler! dread not a sneer! We have heard your craft contemned, we have known it mentioned with deprecatory and faint praise, as though it required an excuse. In our estimation nothing of the sort holds place; we are fishermen—pure and simple. As a learned judge said to his brother judge at a bar-dinner—" No, brother; not bad port wine: there is no bad port wine; some port is better than ...