Worms, however, were outside my taste. To see a sad creature go wriggling in the air, and then, cursing the day of its birth, descend upon the wet storm of the waters, and there go tossing up and down, without any perception of scenery--this (which is now become a very scientific and delicate art in delusion of trout) to me is a thing below our duty to our kin. A fish is a fellow that ought to be caught, if a man has sufficient skill for it. But not with any cruelty on either side; though the Lord knows that they torment us more, when they won't bite on any conditions, than some little annoyance we may cause them--when we do pull them out--can balance. Certain of the soundness of these views, if, indeed, they had ever occurred to me, but despairing to convince my sister of them,--for women have so little logic,--I fetched out a very ancient fly-book, with most of the hackles devoured by moth-grubs, and every barb as rusty as old enmity should grow. Harold never fished; he had no patience for it; and as for enjoying nature, his only enjoyment was to improve it. Tom Erricker, who was lazy enough to saunter all day by a river, while he talked as if examiners were scalping him, not an atom did he know of any sort of fishing, except sitting in a punt, and pulling roach in, like a pod of seedy beans upon a long beanstick. Therefore was everything in my book gone rusty, and grimy, and maggoty, and looped into tangles of yellow gut,--that very book which had been the most congenial love of boyhood. If I had only taken half as well to Homer, Virgil, Horace, I might have been a Fellow of All Souls now (Bene natus, bene vestitus) and brought my sister Grace to turn the heads of Heads of Houses, in the grand old avenue, where the Dons behold the joys that have slipped away from them. But perhaps I should never have been half as happy. To battle with the world, instead of battening in luxury, is the joy of life, while there is any pluck and pith. And I almost felt, as a man is apt to feel, when in his full harness, and fond of it, that to step outside of it, even for a few hours, was a bit of self-indulgence unworthy of myself. However, I patched up a cast of two flies, which was quite enough, and more than enough, for a little stream like the Pebblebourne, wherein I had resolved to wet my line.