Many friends urged him to try their waters for trout, pike, salmon, jack-fishing, and he enjoyed their hospitality greatly. His father who was devoted to the sport, in which he excelled even after his ninetieth year, was very fond of accompanying him. Fawcett’s early practice enabled him to throw a fly with great accuracy. He was fond of combining his amusements, and would wade in the stream while one of his great friends often went with him, though walking on the bank so as not to throw his shadow on the water, but so that he could talk to his heart’s content without disturbing the angler. Fawcett was wont to say that trout hear very badly, and are not distracted by political economy. So fond was Fawcett of the study of his favourite subject that his first secretary records how in moments snatched between fishing he would accompany Fawcett to a tea-house, where he would read to him Mill’s _Political Economy_. Those who accompanied him fishing are agreed that he was a much better fisherman than sighted people generally are. This may have been due to his extraordinary patience, or to his zeal in learning from the experts with whom he associated. A Salisbury friend who often fished with him says: ‘He would make his way through anything. He often walked along the river’s edge fishing, and he never fell in. One day he was fishing and caught his line in a tree overhead. He exclaimed to his secretary, who came up, “Can’t you see it?” then, with added impatience, “See it’s up there, I can see it!”’ With his characteristic pluck he did not hesitate to wade in the stream or to cross a narrow plank. He enjoyed all the roughing incidents in fishing, even bumping about in a donkey cart full of fish, and he was particularly glad to meet the country folk and have a chat with them. CHAPTER VII DISTRACTION Fishing—In the Commons—Need for Distraction—What Helen Keller thinks—Sir Francis Campbell—Leap Frog—Despair and Cheer—Paupers and Political Economy. [Sidenote: What Fishing meant for Fawcett.] It sometimes seems inconsistent that one so acutely sensitive as Fawcett was to suffering of all kinds should not have hesitated to get pleasure from a sport involving the necessary cruelty of fishing. In discussing this, Fawcett at times would maintain the usual ground of the fishes insensibility to pain, but again he would frankly justify it as the best method of keeping himself employed and distracted from the weighty problems which often overburdened him. It must not be forgotten that, however clever in adapting themselves to their misfortune the blind are, they are relieved from the thousands of the distractions which disturb the concentration of even the best seeing worker. In his lecture-room the sighted teacher is unconsciously drawn from the monotony of his one purpose by seeing his mind play on the sensibilities of his hearers. [Sidenote: Screened Bobbing Bonnets.]