button to main menu  Gents Mag 1900 part 2 p.360

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Gentleman's Magazine 1900 part 2 p.360
about midnight and continue gorging, with few lulls, till daybreak. It is not necessary to be expert in fishing, and many, who do not think they possess enough patience for the sport, will be surprised how interesting they find such a night on the water. Often incidents of an amusing or exciting nature happen. We were once rowing along the top reach of Windermere in pitch darkness when our oarsmen suddenly put on a spurt. For a few secons, the boat simply tore through the water, then from out of space, or maybe the bottom of the lake, sprang a rock, and we crashed into it with tremendous force. We were shot over the thwarts into a confused heap on the boat's floor, and I well remember that someone's red hot pipe reclined for one agonising second on my ear. The difficulty of gauging distances across water is always great, but when night comes on it is doubly hard. Yet a sunrise viewed from a boat is well worth the amount of discomfort incurred. To some, the silence reigning over the waters is an unspeakable delight - when the shadows drop like a curtain into the valleys, and the night glow fringes the northern mountains, the lights begin to glow in the houses by the shore, and the utter loneliness becomes oppresive. But when light after light goes out and the faint whisperings cease to come from the land, your spirits recover and a happy time commences. Don't, however, go to sleep in your boat while waiting for daybreak. When walking early by the shore of Windermere Lake I glanced over a wall and saw, hard and fast on a miniature sandbank, a boat in the stern of which two figures were lying fast asleep. I passed quite close and for a moment thought to waken them, then, thinking that the increased power of the sun would arouse them without the start inseparable to my call, I passed on.
One July night we went "sugaring" for moths. We were not a trio of experienced entomologists; indeed, our leader only would have known the difference between "an old lady" and a "hay-time moth."
By nine o'clock it was thought sufficiently dark for our purpose. At the first hitch, while my brother went back for some requisite, I was left in charge of the tin containing our lure. With a small paint brush I dabbed this fairly over some nine square inches of a sycamore. Retiring to the bridge, in a few minutes I noticed some large moths fluttering among the outside leaves of the tree; doubtless the strong scent of sugar, rum, and beer had attracted them. In less than three minutes my brother returned, and we had the pleasure of finding on the tree a good specimen of the swallow-tailed moth, not a common insect with us. As we passed up the
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