`` Shure thin , and your honour 's the thrue fisherman , and understands it all like a book . Why , ye spake as if ye 'd known the wather a thousand years ! As I said , how could there be a fish here at all , just now ? '' `` But you said just now they were shouldering each other out of water ? '' And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome , sly , soft , sleepy , good-natured , untrustable , Irish gray eye , and answer with the prettiest smile : `` Shure , and did n't I think your honour would like a pleasant answer ? '' So you must not trust Dennis , because he is in the habit of giving pleasant answers : but , instead of being angry with him , you must remember that he is a poor Paddy , and knows no better ; so you must just burst out laughing ; and then he will burst out laughing too , and slave for you , and trot about after you , and show you good sport if he can -- for he is an affectionate fellow , and as fond of sport as you are -- and if he ca n't , tell you fibs instead , a hundred an hour ; and wonder all the while why poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland , and some other places , where folk have taken up a ridiculous fancy that honesty is the best policy . Or was it like a Welsh salmon river , which is remarkable chiefly -LRB- at least , till this last year -RRB- for containing no salmon , as they have been all poached out by the enlightened peasantry , to prevent the Cythrawl Sassenach -LRB- which means you , my little dear , your kith and kin , and signifies much the same as the Chinese Fan Quei -RRB- from coming bothering into Wales , with good tackle , and ready money , and civilisation , and common honesty , and other like things of which the Cymry stand in no need whatsoever ? Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among the Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are gray , under the wise new fishing-laws ? -- when Winchester apprentices shall covenant , as they did three hundred years ago , not to be made to eat salmon more than three days a week ; and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under Salisbury spire as they are in Holly-hole at Christchurch ; in the good time coming , when folks shall see that , of all Heaven 's gifts of food , the one to be protected most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon , who is generous enough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces , and to come back next year weighing five pounds , without having cost the soil or the state one farthing ? Or was it like a Scotch stream , such as Arthur Clough drew in his `` Bothie '' : - `` Where over a ledge of granite Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended ... Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under ; Beautiful most of all , where beads of foam uprising Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the stillness ... Cliff over cliff for its sides , with rowan and pendant birch boughs . '' ... Ah , my little man , when you are a big man , and fish such a stream as that , you will hardly care , I think , whether she be roaring down in full spate , like coffee covered with scald cream , while the fish are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race , or flashing up the cataract like silver arrows , out of the fiercest of the foam ; or whether the fall be dwindled to a single thread , and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a turnpike road , while the salmon huddle together in one dark cloud in the clear amber pool , sleeping away their time till the rain creeps back again off the sea . You will not care much , if you have eyes and brains ; for you will lay down your rod contentedly , and drink in at your eyes the beauty of that glorious place ; and listen to the water-ouzel piping on the stones , and watch the yellow roes come down to drink and look up at you with their great soft trustful eyes , as much as to say , `` You could not have the heart to shoot at us ? '' And then , if you have sense , you will turn and talk to the great giant of a gilly who lies basking on the stone beside you . He will tell you no fibs , my little man ; for he is a Scotchman , and fears God , and not the priest ; and , as you talk with him , you will be surprised more and more at his knowledge , his sense , his humour , his courtesy ; and you will find out -- unless you have found it out before -- that a man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London . No . It was none of these , the salmon stream at Harthover . It was such a stream as you see in dear old Bewick ; Bewick , who was born and bred upon them . A full hundred yards broad it was , sliding on from broad pool to broad shallow , and broad shallow to broad pool , over great fields of shingle , under oak and ash coverts , past low cliffs of sandstone , past green meadows , and fair parks , and a great house of gray stone , and brown moors above , and here and there against the sky the smoking chimney of a colliery . You must look at Bewick to see just what it was like , for he has drawn it a hundred times with the care and the love of a true north countryman ; and , even if you do not care about the salmon river , you ought , like all good boys , to know your Bewick . At least , so old Sir John used to say , and very sensibly he put it too , as he was wont to do : `` If they want to describe a finished young gentleman in France , I hear , they say of him , ` Il sait son Rabelais . '
But if I want to describe one in XXXXX , I say , ` He knows his Bewick . '
England Il Paddy Scotch Scotchman civilisation gilly peasantry rowan smoking