I must tell you that the sight of a fly-fisher is so far interesting abroad that it is only practised by the English; and although, Heaven knows, there is no scarcity of them in town and cities, the moment you wander in the least out of the beaten, frequented track of travel, you rejoice to see your countryman. I made towards him, therefore, at once, to ask what sport he had, and came up just as he had landed a good-sized fish. "I see, sir," said I, "that the fish are not so strong as in our waters. You 'd have given that fellow twenty minutes more play, had he been in a Highland tarn." "Or in that brisk little river at Dodsborough," replied he, laughing; and, turning round at the same time to sainte me, I perceived that it was Captain Morris. You may remember him being quartered at Bruff, about two years ago, and having had some altercation with my governor on some magisterial topics. He was never much to my taste. I thought him somewhat of a military prig, very stiff and stand off; but whether it was the shooting-jacket _vice_ the red coat, or change of place and scene, I know not, but now he seemed far more companionable than I could have thought him. He was a capital angler too, and spoke of shooting and deer-stalking like one passionately fond of them. I felt half ashamed at first, when he asked me my opinion of the trout streams in the neighborhood, and it was only as we warmed up that I owned to the kind of life I had been leading at Baden, and the consequences it had entailed. "Fortunately for me, in one sense," said he, laughing, "I have always been too poor a man to play at anything; and chess, which excludes all idea of money, is the only game I know. But of this I am quite sure, that the worst of gambling is neither the time nor the money lost upon it; it is the simple fact that, if you ever win, from that moment forth you are unfitted to the pursuits by which men earn their livelihood. The slow, careworn paths of daily industry become insufferable to him who can compass a year's labor by the turn of a die. Enrich yourself but once--only once--at the play-table, and try then what it is to follow any career of patient toil." He had seen, he said, many examples of this in his own regiment; some of the very finest fellows had been ruined by play, for, as he remarked, "it is strange enough, there are few vices so debasing, and yet the natures and temperaments most open to the seduction of the gaming-table are very far from being those originally degraded." I suppose that his tone of conversation chimed in well with my thoughts at the moment, for I listened to all he said with deep interest, and willingly accepted his invitation to eat some of his morning's sport at a little cottage, where he lived, hard by. He had taken it for the season, and was staying there with his mother, a charming old lady, who welcomed me with great cordiality.