Ever since the time when the famous definition of angling as a combination of "a stick and a string with a worm at one end and a fool at the other" was first given to the world, it has been the custom of a large section of society to disparage the particular sport, which has for its object the catching of fish, very much more than any of the other developments which the killing propensity takes among sportsmen. When a man mentions that he is going off on a fishing expedition, the announcement is not met with the respect which is accorded to him who proclaims the fact that he has it in contemplation to spend a day in beating the turnips for partridges, or riding across country in pursuit of a fox. People have a provoking way of smiling when fishing is spoken of; and when they meet you, armed with the necessary paraphernalia which makes up an angler's equipment, their countenances directly assume either an amused expression, indicating a state of feeling not very remote from absolute pity, or a look of delicate forbearance which is almost the more difficult to bear of the two.
There surely never was any pastime regarded with so little respect as this of fishing. But one good quality (that of patience) is ever identified with it; and even that, when connected with this particular sport, is sometimes spoken of in a disparaging tone; so that it is by no means an uncommon thing to hear a man brag of his deficiency in this respect, saying, "I've not got patience enough for that sort of thing"; as if the fact redounded enormously to his credit.
"Going fishing?" says your hearty friend as he meets you in the hall, equipped for the sport, "You must be hard up for some amusement--for of all the deadly-lively proceedings----"
"Going fishing?" says another. "Well, it's certainly too early in the season for anything else in the way of sport; but still----"
The very partisans of fishing, too, help, in a certain way, to bring it into discredit. What a literature it has! The literature of all sport is apt to be trying; but this of fishing is surely especially disastrous. The facetious element always figures here in such grievous force. Nor only that. Dreadful conventional forms of expression, phrases in inverted commas, involved ways of expressing a simple thing, abound--so that one meets continually with such expressions as the "gentle craft" and the "finny tribe." The sportsman who devotes himself to fishing is called a "member of the piscatorial fraternity," or a "brother of the angle," or a "disciple of 'old Izaak,'" or by some other roundabout and exasperating designation. Why it is that people who write on this particular subject cannot express their ideas in plain English and avoid such forms of speech as the above it is difficult to say; but so it is.