DRY-FLY MEDITATIONS 69 



not, would one ever put such a fly on first ? It is a 

 difficult problem, and the worry of it helps to make the 

 rest of the fly question unendurable. There is one way 

 out a complete new set of the indispensable flies 

 arranged in a new box by the tackle-maker. 



In the abstract the approach of the trout season is 

 a thing full of holy joy, and we all freely admit that 

 we are glad of it. Yet it brings its troubles to us 

 weaker brethren. I have serious thoughts of becoming 

 a man of method after this year. 



2. APRIL 



There are two Aprils. There is an April of dream 

 and delight, when a warm sun alternates with soft 

 showers, when a man can actually see the young green 

 things growing apace, when the water-meadows seem 

 fair meads refreshed by rills of Paradise, and when the 

 trout rise steadily from mid-morning until tea-time. 

 Then a man may angle with confidence, secure in 

 hooks of practical size and gut of sensible texture, for 

 at the beginning of the ideal season fish are bold 

 feeders. Winter has been a time of sleep and of for- 

 getting, and they hold no painfully acquired theories 

 about gossamer points or microscopic flies. At the 

 beginning of his education a child accepts the false as 

 readily as the true, and so the trout. So also the 

 angler, and hence this suggestion of an April day, of 

 which all men must have had experience in December 

 reverie. Possibly some few, far back in their lives, may 

 have met with it in its right place ; I remember a 

 single glorious basket of five and a half brace, good fish 



