"License!" said Jone, "I don't fish."
"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Oh, I see, you are a cycler."
"No," said Jone, "I'm not that, either, I'm a pervader."
"Really!" said the old gentleman; "what do you mean by that?"
"I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in
a trap. That's my style of rural pleasuring."
"But you do fish at home," I said to Jone, not wishing the English
gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn't know anything
about sport.
"Oh, yes," said Jone, "I used to fish for perch and sunfish."
"Sunfish?" said Mr. Poplington. "I don't know that fish at all. What
sort of a fly do you use?"
"I don't fish with any flies at all," said Jone; "I bait my hook with
worms."
Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking
on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd
never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm
in my life. There's no sort of science in worm fishing."
"There's double sport," said Jone, "for first you've got to catch your
worm. Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there's no
use cheating them into the bargain."
"Cheat!" cried Mr. Poplington. "If I had to catch a whale I'd fish for
him with a fly. But you Americans are strange people. Worms, indeed!"
"We don't all use worms," said Jone; "there's lots of fly fishers in
America, and they use all sorts of flies. If we are to believe all the
Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as
big as crows."
"Really?" said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little
twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat
the fishes, what size of worms do they use?"
"Well," said Jone, "in the far West I've heard that the common black
snake is the favorite bait. He's six or seven feet long, and fishermen
that use him don't have to have any line. He's bait and line all in
one."
Mr. Poplington laughed. "I see you are fond of a joke," said he, "and
so am I, but I'm also fond of my breakfast."
"I'm with you there," said Jone, and we all went in.
Mr. Poplington was very pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a
great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met
want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do
know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than
what they don't know.
