IX THE FLOAT & & & ^ 



WERE one setting out to construct a philosophy 

 of angling it would be proper, I think, to begin 

 with the float, the link which connects the contempla- 

 tive man with the wonders of the deep. Everybody 

 knows about floats ; even the Philistine uses them to 

 support his inaccuracies touching the craft and the 

 brethren. A sound scholar, from whom I was privileged 

 to receive the rudiments of humane letters, a man 

 decidedly of opinion that fishing, for small boys, was 

 an undesirable species of " loafing," used, I remember, 

 to be particularly severe about the float; it was un- 

 fortunate, perhaps, that the word lent itself so kindly 

 to alliteration, for your sound scholar dearly loves a 

 phrase, and if he be a masterful man, is apt to make 

 it not only define a situation but also determine a 

 policy. Happily there were more ways than one out 

 of the school demesne, and the river bank offered 

 several secluded nooks to which the eye of authority 

 never penetrated. The float of those days was a fat, 

 globular thing, gross in aspect, clumsy in movement, 

 and, though its painted cheeks were not unpleasing to 

 the eye, so far as a float ever can legitimately be con- 

 demned as a symbol of folly, it could. Even in that 



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