DRY-FLY MEDITATIONS 87 



6. HOOKED AND LOST 



The angler should beware of those tags of proverbial 

 philosophy which have, insensibly almost, attached 

 themselves to his craft. Chief among them is that 

 fallacious parody which insists in season and out that 

 "it is better to have hooked and lost than never 

 to have hooked at all." There is probably no short 

 sentence that has wrought more havoc with many a 

 serene temper than this "idol of the water-meadow," 

 as, after the ancient fashion, it might be called. On 

 the face of it it seems so reasonable. We do not, 

 one reflects in the study, fish for slaughter; we 

 have no lust for blood ; we are contemplative men, 

 interested in the way of a trout with a fly. To have 

 a way with a fly a trout must be alive ; the row of 

 corpses on the dish at even is but an accident a 

 regrettable accident almost, but to be endured, since 

 it shows that we have contemplated the day through 

 to some purpose, and because a sordidly material 

 world demands that theory should sometimes be sup- 

 ported with proofs. Dead trout, in short, are proofs, 

 statistics, tables, things wholly alien from the high 

 thinking of our profession ; we would just as soon be 

 without them. So reason we at home, in the train, 

 and even at the waterside, until reason goes reeling 

 under the first buffet of misfortune. 



The account of some typical events on the Itchen 

 may serve to illustrate the futility of proverbial philo- 

 sophy such as this, begotten of a taste for juggling with 

 words, and nurtured by a habit of compromising with 

 truth. In the morning fate was on the side of error ; 



