In conclusion, we will quote once more from dear old Charles Kingsley, for what was true fifty years ago is true now—­at all events, in this part of Gloucestershire; and may it ever remain so!

“Come, then, you who want pleasant fishing days without the waste of time and trouble and expense involved in two hundred miles of railway journey, and perhaps fifty more of highland road; come to pleasant country inns, where you can always get a good dinner; or, better still, to pleasant country houses, where you can always get good society—­to rivers which always fish brimful, instead of being, as these mountain ones are, very like a turnpike road for three weeks, and then like bottled porter for three days—­to streams on which you have strong south-west breezes for a week together on a clear fishing water, instead of having, as on these mountain ones, foul rain spate as long as the wind is south-west, and clearing water when the wind chops up to the north,—­streams, in a word, where you may kill fish four days out of five from April to October, instead of having, as you will most probably in the mountain, just one day’s sport in the whole of your month’s holiday.”

[Illustration:  A bridge over the Coln. 171.png]

CHAPTER VIII.

WHEN THE MAY-FLY IS UP.

     “Just in the dubious point where with the pool
      Is mix’d the trembling stream, or where it boils
      Around the stone, or from the hollow’d bank
      Reverted plays in undulating flow,
      There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly.”

      THOMSON’S Seasons.

When does the may-fly come, the gorgeous succulent may-fly, that we all love so well in the quiet valleys where the trout streams wend their silent ways?

It comes “of a Sunday,” answers the keeper, who would fain see the prejudice against fishing “on the Sabbath” scattered to the four winds of heaven.  He thinks it very contrary of the fly that it should invariably come up “strong” on the one day in the week on which the trout are usually allowed a rest.

“’Tis a most comical job, but it always comes up thickest of a Sunday,” he frequently exclaims.  Then, if you press him for further particulars, he grows eloquent on the subject, and tells you as follows:  “We always reckons to kill the most fish on ‘Durby day.’  ’Tis a most singular thing, but the ‘Durby day’ is always the best.”

Now, considering that Derby day is a movable feast, saving that it always comes on a Wednesday, there would appear to be no more logic in this statement than there is in the one about the fly coming up strong on a Sunday.  However, so deep rooted is the theory that the Derby and the cream of the may-fly fishing are inseparably associated that we have come to talk of the biggest rise of the season as “the Derby day,” whatever day of the week it may happen to be.