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Show FISHERMAN'S LUCK heredity that his niece, Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, is the author of the most tender and pathetic of all angling stories, Fishin' Jimmy. BuT it is not only in books written altogether from his peculiar point of view and to humour his harmless insanity, that the angler may find pleasant reading about his favourite pastime. There are excellent bits of fishing scattered all through the field of good literature. It seems as if almost all the men who could write well had a friendly feeling for the contemplative sport. Plutarch, in The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, tells a capital fish-story of the manner in which the Egyptian Cleopatra fooled that far-famed Roman wight, Marc Antony, when they were angling together on the Nile. As I recall it, from a perusal in early boyhood, Antony was havmg very bad luck indeed; in fact he had taken nothing, and was sadly put out about it. Cleopatra, thinking to get a rise out of him, secretly told one of her attendants to dive over the opposite side of the barge and fasten a salt fish to the Roman general's 164 FISHING IN BOOKS book. The attendant was much pleased with this commission, and, having executed it, proceeded to add a fine stroke of his own ; for when he had made the fish fast on the hook, he gave a great pull to the line and held on tightly. Antony was much excited and began to haul violently at his tackle. "By Jupiter!" he exclaimed, "it was long in coming, but I have a colossal bite now." "Have a care," said Cleopatra, laughing behind her sunshade, "or he will drag you into the water. You must give him line when he pulls hard." "Not a denarius will I give!" rudely responded Antony. "I mean to have this halibut or Hades!" At this moment the man under the boat, being out of breath, let the line go, and Antony, falling backward, drew up the salted herring. "Take that fish off the hook, Palinurus," he proudly said. "It is not as large as I thought, but it looks like the oldest one that has been caught today." Such, in effect, is the tale narrated by the vera-cious Plutarch. And if any careful critic wishes to verify my quotation from memory, he may compare 165 |