84 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



approaches to our latter-day trout. Further than this I 

 shall not for the moment advise you in the matter of a rod, 

 because the advice would be sheer waste of words. You may 

 become proficient in the casting of a fly for a very long 

 while before you will be expert enough to make wise choice 

 of a rod. Indeed, many a man has gone through a life-long 

 and not unsuccessful fishing career without ever attaining 

 expertness in this choice. It is rather a different art from that 

 of casting, and even the most expert is apt to be deceived by 

 the " feel " of the rod in the shop. It is so entirely "an- 

 other story " when we have it beside the river in real work. 



Do not, therefore, in the first instance bother about the 

 purchase of a rod at all. We need not assume you friend- 

 less. Of what value is a friend except to borrow of him ? 

 Borrow of him a rod, telling him frankly your innocence of 

 all knowledge of what some write of as "the gentle craft" ; 

 and yet more particularly borrow of him a line. I say 

 this "yet more particularly" because I propose to give you 

 your first casting lessons on the lawn, and — note this and put 

 it in a convenient mental pigeon-hole for ready reference, for 

 I often see old anglers, who should know better, neglecting 

 it — no treatment is more harmful to a fine line, more apt 

 to fray off that waterproofing varnish which is its protection 

 from decay, than dragging it over the lawn grass. And a fine 

 supple line is too valuable and rare a possession to be lightly 

 put in peril, as you will learn in all due course. But when I 

 write of a " fine line " I write in reference to its quality, 

 not as to its tenuity, for one of the points in which our modern 

 wisdom is certainly superior to that of our fathers is in the 

 weight that we give our lines. They had a theory that the 

 thinnest line would place the fly most lightly on the water, 

 therefore they practised this cult of thinness to such extreme 

 that you might find them with a rod of the two-handed dimen- 

 sion and a line therewith of a tenuity which by no muscle and 

 almost by no miracle could be cast out in the face of anything 

 like an adverse current of wind. The lines most helpful 

 to casting are those sold as " tapering," which fine down 

 to a tenuity scarcely thicker than the gut itself towards 

 their junction, but which swell to a comparatively large 

 weight and substance within a few yards. The virtue of this 



