... 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 England , I say , ` He knows his Bewick . ' And I think that is the higher compliment . '' But Tom thought nothing about what the river was like . All his fancy was , to get down to the wide wide sea . And after a while he came to a place where the river spread out into broad still shallow reaches , so wide that little Tom , as he put his head out of the water , could hardly see across . And there he stopped . He got a little frightened . `` This must be the sea , '' he thought . `` What a wide place it is ! If I go on into it I shall surely lose my way , or some strange thing will bite me .
I will stop here and look out for the otter , or the eels , or some one XXXXX tell me where I shall go . ''
At after as for from into like to unless whether