CLEAR WATERS 



pool in waders and brogues you are more likely than 

 not to remain at the bottom of it. It is bad enough 

 to sit suddenly down in cold April water up to the 

 third button of your waistcoat, though only pro- 

 blematically injurious. On the other hand you are 

 here quite certain to do this occasionally, whereas the 

 other faux fas you would probably not have a chance 

 of making twice. 



Quite recently I revisited the Dee after a long 

 lapse of years. Of course it was a trifle melancholy ; 

 such things always are. The ripple of water over 

 stones sings many tunes, or rather touches many chords 

 — the sad, the soothing, and the gay, but it is always 

 terribly reminiscent. It will bring back your boy- 

 hood, if you have always been a fisherman, with a 

 reaHsm that nothing else can approach. It will recall 

 the forms, the faces, and the voices of the departed with 

 whom it has (for you) been once associated with pain- 

 ful clarity. I was not harrowed quite thus far upon 

 the Dee. For though Evan, Rhys, and Griffith were 

 among the shadows, they awakened kindly rather than 

 tearful memories. But on the other hand, there 

 are more important things you may forget, as I dis- 

 covered to my cost. One of these lapses caused merely 

 disappointment, the other gave me the worst ducking 

 I have ever had in the Dee. The day after I arrived 

 in the first week of April a cold east wind blew shrilly 

 over shrivelled waters. An impossible outlook by aU 

 ordinary trouting estimates, into which last I had 

 relapsed by constant intercourse with other and more 

 normal streams in spring. So I felt annoyed to have 

 thus fallen upon such evil times. But I went out of 

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