Previous to this interesting conversation, and ere the condition of our funds had been fully ascertained, the appearance of a most promising river, which flows beside Warmbrunn, had tempted us to put together our rods; and we were actually preparing, after beds and supper should have been ordered, to set out for a day's fishing. The appearance of the rods created here the same sort of astonishment which had been called forth by them elsewhere; and we of course gratified the natives still more by exhibiting our lines and flies. I observed that mine host had been prodigiously smitten with my rod. He took it up, wielded it in all manner of ways, and pronounced it to be the most perfect thing of the kind that ever was seen; nay, he even questioned me, indirectly, as to the amount of money which would be demanded for such an article in England, and when I told him, pronounced that I had made an excellent bargain. No great while elapsed ere decisive proofs were afforded, that his was no barren admiration. "You are in want of money," said he, "I will buy your rod." I hardly know how I looked when this proposition came forth with all imaginable solemnity, but I made haste to decline it, and he had too much native good breeding to press his suggestion. He was a civil man, and in offering to purchase my fishing-rod, meant to do me a kindness, while, at the same time, he gratified himself; so I gave him a fly, with which he was greatly delighted; I told him likewise how to use it. But if my unfortunate fly has since come into play, at the end of such a line and such a rod as the keeper of the Black Eagle produced, I am quite sure that it has caught no fish, if, indeed, it be not long ago "fathoms deep" under water. One of Mrs. Finn's red hackles would cut but a sorry figure as an appendage to some six yards of whip-cord, more especially after the said whip-cord should have been fastened, as my friend's was, to the extremity of a hazel wand, as thick and inflexible as the horn of a roebuck.