I thought
it was another little one, and I went to jerk it up. Hang me, if I could
move the rod! It took me half-an-hour - half-an-hour, sir! - to land
that fish; and every moment I thought the line was going to snap! I
reached him at last, and what do you think it was? A sturgeon! a forty
pound sturgeon! taken on a line, sir! Yes, you may well look surprised -
I'll have another three of Scotch, landlord, please."
And then he goes on to tell of the astonishment of everybody who saw it;
and what his wife said, when he got home, and of what Joe Buggles thought
about it.
I asked the landlord of an inn up the river once, if it did not injure
him, sometimes, listening to the tales that the fishermen about there
told him; and he said:
"Oh, no; not now, sir. It did used to knock me over a bit at first, but,
lor love you! me and the missus we listens to `em all day now. It's what
you're used to, you know. It's what you're used to."
I knew a young man once, he was a most conscientious fellow, and, when he
took to fly-fishing, he determined never to exaggerate his hauls by more
than twenty-five per cent.
"When I have caught forty fish," said he, "then I will tell people that I
have caught fifty, and so on. But I will not lie any more than that,
because it is sinful to lie.
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