WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 



characteristic of Englishmen, and always noticeable 

 to the alien eye, since the first alien recorded his 

 impressions of us. The Englishman who can afford it, 

 and sometimes when he cannot, loves an outfit — a 

 trousseau. All the world over, whether as settler in 

 a new country or as a mere traveller, he is notorious 

 for the superfluity of impedimenta he drags around 

 with him. The anxiety to provide against every 

 emergency, possible and impossible, with just a touch 

 of the national thriftlessness in spending, or what 

 seems so to most other races, shows itself even in such 

 a trifle as the tyro's congested fly-book or box. It is 

 an ' outfit ' automatically inevitable in his eyes, and 

 an Englishman or an English-woman, as I have said, 

 dearly loves a trousseau. The percentage of wastage 

 in the outfits of English men and women of all kinds 

 in the last two centuries probably runs into millions. 



Except that the flies used are smaller, I do not think 

 the taste in patterns, with the strong proclivity for 

 spiders, has altered much on the Scottish border. 

 Certainly the Whiteadder expert kills wonderful baskets 

 under the circumstances of his much-fished-for trout 

 with a very limited selection. Stewart, fifty years 

 ago, who, the reader may be again reminded, was 

 accounted the best trout fisherman on the Border, 

 which assuredly meant the best fisherman in Scotland, 

 considered that some half a dozen patterns were suffi- 

 cient for any one. He and Mr. Francis Frances, then 

 fishing editor of the Fields and author of a work that 

 was the delight of my boyhood, had much wordy 

 warfare on the subject. Neither had much conception 

 of the other's environment, circumstances, and tradi- 



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