DRY-FLY MEDITATIONS 77 



landed five brace more, whereof I again only kept one 

 fish, and for the same reasons. Never, I should say, 

 did an angler do so little with such opportunities. The 

 trout simply tumbled over one another to get at the fly, 

 while I did my level best to prevent them by every 

 expedient forbidden in the books. The fish landed 

 were simply those my incompetence could not avoid. 

 The one I kept weighed one and a quarter pounds. At 

 last, with still an hour of daylight, I gave it up and 

 departed. I had caught ten brace of fish with the May- 

 fly, but was nevertheless a humiliated and beaten man. 

 Then occurred one of those redeeming circumstances 

 that relieve life's dark moments as lightning relieves 

 the night. Parallel with the river, and owning its own 

 bridge some fifty yards away, runs a small brook, and it 

 holds trout. On the bridge I lingered, and perceived 

 two feeding fish a few yards apart upstream. To 

 reach them I had to enter the garden of a cottage, and 

 kneel among prickly gooseberry bushes ; it was difficult 

 casting, for the trout lay in narrow channels between 

 weeds, and there was a hedge close behind the rod. 

 The whole day long I had been busy demonstrating 

 that this sort of thing was beyond me ; yet I caught 

 both those fish in a few minutes, and did it in a way 

 which was creditable, though I make the observation 

 who obviously should not. One weighed one and a 

 quarter pounds, and the other two and a half pounds. 

 Truly, angling is a strange business, 



