THE JOYS OF ANGLING 5 



this symple treatise shall teche him. So, thenne, his 

 losse is not greous, and other greffes may he not 

 have, savynge but yf ony fisse breke away after that 

 he is take on the hoke; or elles that he catche nought; 

 which been not greous. For yf he dooth as this 

 treatyse techyth, but yf there be nought in the water, 

 and yette atte the leesth he hath holsom walke and 

 mery, at his ease : a swete ayre of the swete savours 

 of the mede floures, that makyth hym hungry. He 

 hereth the melodyous armony of foules. He seeth 

 the yonge swannes; heerons; duckes; cotes, and many 

 other foules wyth theyr brodes; whyche me seemyth 

 better than alle of noyse of houndys; the Wastes of 

 hornys and the crye of foulis that hunters, faukeners 

 and foulers can make. And yf the angler take 

 fysshe: surely thenne is there noo man merier than 

 he is in his spyryte." 



In 1919 Emerson Hough comments at sixty-three: 

 " By process of elimination, I have found a great 

 many other sorts of sport of late to be too hard or 

 too easy or too clean or too dirty. . . . Indeed, what 

 really can equal the art of the fly-rod on a good trout- 

 water? It is clean, it is beautiful beyond compari- 

 son, it is difficult and yet alluring. ... It is danger- 

 ous for a man with a weak heart to go trout-fishing, 

 for he is liable to get a case of shell-shock at any 

 time. You are going down a nice, quiet stream and 

 you see a dark corner over there where a tree hangs 

 out, over a pool which is as smooth as oil and black 



