A Summer Idyl 1 1 3 



and the whin the river dances in broken streams that 

 are a joy to the heart of a trout-fisher. 



I am not a real but only a make-believe angler, 

 and therefore when I sallied forth with rod and line 

 I carefully avoided the streams. On the few occa- 

 sions on which I had been tempted to take any other 

 course one of two things had invariably happened. 

 Either my flies had caught the treetops and been lost 

 there, or if I did manage to get them on to the water 

 they speedily got hanked on the weeds and suffered 

 the same fate. Asa lover of the picturesque I adored 

 the streams, and especially at even when the rising" 

 moon 'happened to shine straight down the river and 

 the water like Time moved ever on with its sob or 

 smile, over and past the shadows that waved or were 

 motionless, past them as it had rolled past their 'an- 

 cestors ere the trees that cast them were born, past 

 them as it will roll past their innumerable successors. 

 But as an angler I hated the streams. My favourite 

 place for fishing was in the pool above them ; close 

 beside it was an old willow-tree, the roots of which 

 had been laid bare by the floods. The tree itself, 

 though green and healthy, had fallen almost prostrate 

 in a downward direction. About twenty yards further 

 up was one of those great beds of weed that are so 

 numerous in a hot summer. 



My method of fishing, as I have hinted, was sim- 

 plicity itself. It was merely to cast a line with a worm 

 into this hole, sit down, light a pipe or cigar, and watch 



I 



