_To Horace Harding, c/o Major Alec Cameron, Glen Bruisk, Sutherland, N.B._ 91B HARLEY STREET, W., _August_ 17, 1910. MY DEAR HORACE, So you have yielded at last. Your fine contempt for the gentlest art has begun to dissolve. And being on the very brink of one of the snuggest of sea-trout lochs you think that you must really have a cast or two upon its waters. There are people who will tell you, of course, that it's a blind man's game, or very nearly so, this loch trout fishing. But let the blue waters--crinkled, if fortune smiles, with the daintiest of ripples--be their immediate and sufficient refutation. And some day they may behold you casting one of Mrs. Richardson's artfullest duns over those senior wranglers among trout that lurk in the disillusioned depths of the Itchen. At the same time I am not forwarding you an outfit for your birthday present, as you so delicately suggest, firstly because you tell me that Major Cameron can easily fix you up with all that is necessary; but principally because I am not quite comfortable in my mind as to your real motive for caressing the surface of Loch Bruisk. I should like to be just a little surer that it is a genuine regard for _salmo trutta_ rather than a merely altruistic (though very praiseworthy) desire to be properly companionable to Miss Graham, who is, as you tell me, so awfully keen about it. It is of course a very strong point in her favour, and I remember her brother quite well. He plays half for Richmond, I think, and you introduced us to one another at Queen's. And his sister--I don't remember that you have mentioned her to me before--may of course be the means to an end--an instrument chosen by a merciful Providence whereby a new channel of enjoyment is about to be revealed to you. But on the other hand, I can't help feeling that with your duty done, cheerfully and bravely, as I have no doubt will be the case--and Miss Graham away--the yearning to catch trout may conceivably leave you. So I am sending you instead my very best wishes for the happiest of birthdays, and a hope that you have many others yet in store for you.