THE FLOAT 115 



halcyon time when fish were still unsuspicious it needed 

 at least a perch to pull its unwieldy form under ; a roach 

 no more than made it wobble. Had the sound scholar 

 based his imputations on the ground of using, not a 

 float, but such a float, I should not now be protesting. 



For I readily admit that virtue lies almost wholly in 

 having the right float. Shape is important, and so is 

 colour, and it is pleasant at times to dally with material. 

 I have heard many learned disputations on the respec- 

 tive merits of quills from different birds, one man 

 favouring swan, another goose, a third peacock, and 

 each maintaining his opinion with epic accounts of 

 past sport. But as a rule these disputants are a shade 

 too practical ; their floats are for use only, and they 

 make no allowance for the element of beauty which 

 should have its place in the consideration. 



I used at one time prodigiously to admire a certain 

 slender kind of float fashioned cunningly out of twin 

 sections of clear quill, amber-varnished, silk-lapped, 

 and tipped at either end with a slirn point of bone. 

 I lavished a good shilling thereon (you can buy an 

 admirable cork float for the half of that sum), partly 

 out of respect for the ideal, partly from belief in the 

 efficacy of the lovely object in pursuit of roaches. 

 Certainly it rode the stream in dainty fashion, peeping 

 shyly out like some modest naiad, and responding even 

 to that bite, perceived by the men of Lea alone, when 

 a fat old roach makes a round mouth at the bait and 

 sucks it in only that he may expel it the more 

 emphatically, as a peashooter expels a pea. Out of 

 the water, too, that float was a delight ; it was pleasant 

 merely to let it hang in the air and to see the sunlight 



