Various

“ They are much clearer than the Pentlands behind us, and we have hopes that a southerly breeze may spring up; for along the south-eastern horizon, between the hills and the low mist-cloud above, there is a clear line of light—the weather-gleam, as the Border shepherds poetically name it—showing where the wind is breaking through the haze and uncurtaining the hills. ”

“ You may deceive the trout with your artificial flies when the breeze is blowing and the ripple is strong; but the advantage is all on the side of the finny ones when the wind falls and the ripple ceases. You may cast your flies with as gentle a hand as may be; but his quick eye sees something more than your flies, and he knows from experience that a respectably born and bred insect, fresh from its pupa-case, does not come out for a sail on the water with a yard or two of shining gut trailing behind it, or go about leading three or four other of its fellows after it in a string. ”

“ We might do worse than cultivate Conversation as an Art. Time has room for all things in his hand, and life has need of variety. Desperately busy and terribly in earnest as we may be, blowing bubbles has yet its value. Moreover, the true art of conversation is a lesson in good-breeding, which, in its turn, is the fine fleur of civilisation ”

“ Down into the valley also, thin streaks of mist are creeping dismally and slow, groping their way forward with long dripping fingers, like a belated band of midnight ghosts which the morning light has struck with sudden blindness. To the south-west, the Peeblesshire hills are less obscured, but there is floating over them the dull glaze, the leaden hue, which makes my companion sadly prognosticate thunder—and thunder to the angler’s sport is as fatal as mist.
It is indeed very far from being a typical June morning. The earth is gray, and the sky is gray ”

“ We look anxiously across the surface of the brightly rippling water, but not a trout rises to the surface, and not a plash is heard or a ring seen to tell that the finny tribe are there. Knowing, from mournful experience, what it is to be left at the edge of a loch when a dead calm settles down upon it, and your flies are no longer of use, we have brought some worm-bait with us ”

“ We cannot afford to miss even this temporary ripple; for if the thunder comes near there will be an end to sport for a few hours to come. As I step along through the patches of rushy grass that grow by the margin of the lake, I see a small bird glide quickly out of one of those patches and disappear with suspicious celerity and quietness behind another a few yards off. I have not lost in middle manhood the bird-nesting instincts of boyhood’s years, and I am certain, from that bird’s quick, low, quiet mode of flight, that it has just risen from its nest. ”

“ No, no; trout have learned a thing or two under the operation of the law of heredity, just as we, his human—or, if you will, inhuman—captors have done. We may therefore reel up and take to dry land, till it pleases Eolus again to send us a prospering breeze.
As we sit on the soft grass and eat our lunch, we can note the aspect of things around us. The sun is shining steadily down with all his summer brightness and fervour, and the still air feels sultry and close. ”

“ All this is marked in the time we take to alight at the railway station, give up our tickets, and, shouldering basket and rod, set out towards our destination for the day, which lies over this long ridge to the right.
Everything is very still—with the soft stillness of a misty summer morning. Except for the noise of the train we have just left, as it goes coughing hysterically out of the station, one might almost hear the grass growing. The recent rain has washed the dust from leaf and flower, and the fields of young grain are in the reawakened freshness of early growth. ”

“ Others yawn in your face with frank and undisguised weariness; and some put up the transparent screen of a fan or two fingers; others, again, make that constrained grimace which accompanies the eating and the swallowing of the yawn, and think that their sudden gulp and hesitation will pass unobserved. Some give wrong answers, with their eyes fixed on yours, as if listening devoutly to all you say, and absorbed in your conversation. ”

“ My companion then stopped, knocked in a peculiar manner at a street door, told me to take off the spectacles, and led me through what seemed to be a coffee-shop of the most humble kind. In a large room beyond this, there were seated six or seven men, who were not by any means all of the same type. Two or three were evidently Frenchmen, and were talking together with the usual volubility of their nation. The rest were scattered here and there. All were smoking. Some had cups of tea or coffee before them, whilst others seemed to be indulging in spirits-and-water. ”

“ We have had a day in the open air; we have had vigorous healthy exercise for the shoulders and arms (which are sore enough, perhaps, in all conscience, though we would not for our lives admit it) ; we have enjoyed the sights and sounds of nature, and have something like a triumphant feeling of superiority over our poor town companions who have been all the day in chamber or workshop, with nothing better to inflate their lungs than the smoky city atmosphere, and nothing more to delight their ears than the monotonous jingle of tramcar bells and the rattling of cabs over the stony street. ”

“ There is a sudden tightening of the line, and at the same moment, a dozen yards ahead, a big yellow trout springs curved like a bow from the water, and falls back again with a heavy flop. He is on! An aged countryman on the point of the bay opposite, waiting to see if perchance his worm-baited rod will bob, has witnessed the plunge of my captive, and is all intent on the issue. ”

“ The white farmhouse on the opposite side basks serenely at the foot of the hills that overhang it; and a warm dusky haze floats over the neighbouring ravine, where an ancient stream has cut its way down through the lofty range. Not a sound breaks the stillness of the air, not a wavelet disturbs the glassy line of the beach. By-and-by there arises a low buzzing sound, gradually increasing in intensity, till you almost think it must be some far-away railway engine blowing off steam. ”

“ Away from Ringsford, with change of scenes and faces, and with new duties of affection to perform, the best qualities of her nature would be brought into action, whilst she would have leisure enough to arrive at a clear understanding of her own feelings. It was a pity that the old man should be ill; but it was lucky for Pansy—and probably for Caleb—that this call should have been made upon her.
She had made no sign to her friend; and it was not until Madge arrived at the gardener’s cottage on the following afternoon that Pansy’s sudden departure became known to her. ”

“ There has been a fortnight’s drought, followed by two days of rain—the latter rejoicing the heart of the agriculturist and the angler; but yesternight the rain ceased, and its place has been taken by a gray mist, or haar, which the east wind is bringing up from the German Ocean. No angler loves mist. Is it not set down in the angler’s book of common-law precedents, that in the case of Man versus Trout, this obscure element is to be construed in favour of the defender? ”

“ No one dreams of cultivating this art, either in its perfected form or in those rudiments which stand as a ‘grammar in use for beginners;’ that is—correct diction, just expression, that inflection of the voice which shall be eloquent without being theatrical, and that emphasis which shall be indicative without being exaggerated. People drawl out their words into long tails or clip them into docked stumps ”

“ We have men who argue, and men who assert; and we have men, and women too, who come down with a thud on the toes of all whom they encounter in the various walks of conversation. But of the light bright thrust and parry, the brilliant quarte and tierce, the flashing ‘pinked’ and quick riposte characteristic of the palmy days of Parisian society, we have but very little. ”

“ Beyond these rudiments comes the higher art reaching into grace, and needing enlightened intelligence for its perfection. The section which we have been considering belongs only to the grammar, the beginning, the mere infancy of things, like the New Zealander’s tattoo for personal decoration, or his hideous idol for representative art. Beyond the good-breeding of attention comes the supreme art, we had almost said the science of conversation—of all things{444} the most difficult, to judge by its rarity at least in England. ”

“ You look up, and there, on either side of you, a yard deep as far as you can see, is a colony of innumerable midges disporting themselves in the hot air. There must be millions of those tiny creatures, the combined action of whose little wings can send such a hissing through the stillness. ”

“ These sherbet spoons are really works of art, and are valued by oriental amateurs. Many of the merchants are very proud of their sherbet spoons; and being wood, they are ‘lawful;’ for a metal spoon, if of silver, is an abomination; consequently, the teaspoons in Persia have a filigree hole in the bowl, and thus can be used for stirring the tea only, and not for the unlawful act of conveying it to the mouth in a silver spoon. Of course, these high-art sherbet spoons are only seen at the houses of the better classes, a coarser wooden spoon being used by the lower classes. ”

“ The most absurd, the most trivial, thing distracts them. A spider on the wall breaks the thread of an enthralling narrative, and a butterfly on the lawn breaks into the gravest, or the most poetic, talk as ruthlessly as the proverbial bull smashes into the proverbial china-shop. ”

“ He has also the power of suggestiveness and direction, as perfect in its way as the skill with which certain adepts can make a ball wind in and out of stumps and stakes by the clever twist of their first throw off. He is not one of those who run a subject to earth and finish it all the same as one would finish a fox ”

“ The lake is deep here, and I cast slowly, letting the flies sink a little, that the deep-feeding trout may have a chance to see and seize them. I have succeeded in raising one or two, but they do not seem to be in earnest; and am in the act of withdrawing my line preparatory to casting again, when I find that a trout has taken it. But his tactics are not the same as those of the former one. He does not leap out of the water, and I only know by the strain on the line and the curve of the rod that he is on. ”

“ I have every desire for your daughter’s happiness—and, I may add, for my own; of course, in a secondary degree. But I have already pointed out to you, and you have been good enough to agree with me, that good temper and easy circumstances are intimately allied; and I think you will also admit that bad temper and happiness are entirely incompatible. And considering our respective tastes and habits, five hundred a year can scarcely be considered affluence.’
For all his desire to be conciliatory, he could not entirely repress the slight sneer which pervaded his tone and manner. ”

“ These are but the accidents, or rather the pleasant incidents, of the journey; and as we reach once more an oasis of cultivation, we know that the water for which we are bound lies close at hand. The day is gradually losing its misty moodiness, is indeed slowly brightening up. ”

“ When bowls are used—as they invariably are by the rich at meals, and by the poor at all times—the spoons are dipped into the bowl, and after being emptied into the mouth, are replaced in the bowl of sherbet. Thus the use of glass vessels, until lately very expensive in Persia, is dispensed with. Probably with the continuous introduction of the ugly and cheap, but strong and serviceable, Russian glass, the dainty sherbet-spoon of Abadeh will gradually disappear, the more prosaic tumbler taking its place.
One kind of sherbet is not a fruit-sirup, but a distilled water ”

“ And sure it is that we find very queer things indeed in that dry of substance, and prove for ourselves how the Art of Conversation is reduced to its primitive elements, which few give themselves the trouble to embellish, and fewer still to perfect. ”

“ During the seven months of Persian summer, it is usual to serve sherbet at all visits, in lieu of coffee, for coffee is supposed to be heating in the hot afternoons, at which time formal visits are often made; and as the visitor must be given something—for he is never sent empty away—sherbet in glass tankards or istakans—a word borrowed from the Russian term for a tumbler—is handed round. These istakans are often very handsome, being always of cut or coloured glass, often elaborately gilded and painted in colours, or what is termed jewelled—that is, ornamented with an imitation of gems. ”

“ Walking quickly, the keen wind made her cheeks tingle and seemed gradually to clear the fog out of her head. She had heard girls, and women too, boast about the number of men who had ‘asked’ them, and she knew that some of them had even multiplied the number for their own exaltation. ”

“ In London, a busy man has little or no time to think of any one’s affairs except his own; but I confess that this gentleman used often to puzzle me not a little. His seeming prosperity in money matters as compared with his former circumstances, and the singular life he led, caused me often to wonder what were the sources whence he derived his income, my curiosity being not a little increased by his evident desire to keep me in the dark as to the truth of the case. ”

“ She does not even pretend to listen to what you are saying. All the time you are speaking, her eyes are wandering about the room, to make sure that Tom is not forgetting his manners, and that Jane is not making holes in hers—that Frank is where he should be, and Sarah not where she should not be—that Edith is not talking too much, and that Charley is not talking too little: it does not matter what she is anxious about, seeing that if it be not one thing it will be another. ”