As a fisherman MR. PUNCH is in the best of his humours. He makes merry
over the weaknesses of those who follow the craft of Old Izaak, always
with the slyest of genial manners. The angler's habit of exaggerating
the size of his catch--his patience or his impatience when the fish
won't bite--the conscious or unconscious ridicule he has to endure from
onlookers when he is unsuccessful--the proverbial thirst that attacks
the fisherman, whether he catches anything or not--MR. PUNCH has a keen
eye for all such incidentals and presents them so jovially that nobody
laughs over them more heartily than his victims themselves do.
[Illustration]
Leech, Charles Keene, Phil May, Du Maurier, Raven-Hill, Bernard
Partridge, G. D. Armour--most of the best-known PUNCH artists, old and
new, have revelled in the humours of both fishing and shooting.
[Illustration: "POTTING SHRIMPS"]
He gets as much laughter out of those who handle the gun. The infinite
variety of jokes he cracks about the bad shot, the man who can't hit the
birds, or is always hitting the dogs or his companion guns, is amazing.
He does not spare the lady shooter, and jests of the peril in which the
rest of the field are placed when she is out after the birds or rabbits;
and he gets a good deal of fun out of the Frenchman's alien notion of
sport.
[Illustration]
OBSERVATIONS ON GROUND BAIT.--Boys are often taught, though they never
learn, to regard fishing as a cruel amusement, when nevertheless
angling, at least as most commonly practised in the Thames, is
universally admitted to be particularly and pre-eminently the _gentle_
craft.
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