THE PATH OF GOOD INTENTIONS 129 



multiplier apparatus, two acetylene lamps, a number 

 yes, and a licence. So equipped, we shall get much 

 interesting sensation without bothering about trout, 

 and that ought to satisfy any dry-fly man. It were 

 mere sentimentality to regret the old reel, with its 

 cheerful voice, when you can have a new one which 

 will in three turns of the handle wind a fish up to the 

 top ring if the fish be small enough. 



Beneath the next few paving-stones nothing tangible 

 is buried. The resolutions which they mark pertain 

 to procedure, not to equipment. The first concerns 

 the rise. The day of chucking and chancing is past. 

 No more shall the medium olive float over a spot 

 merely because it is a sure hold for a trout ; no 

 more shall a fish be invited to take a red quill merely 

 because he is visible ; no more shall cold or desperation 

 drive the angler to " fish the stream." The rise is the 

 thing in future, and no rise, no cast. There is a 

 certain purist of my acquaintance whom I have long 

 admired from a distance. He collects natural flies 

 and puts them in bottles ; he fishes solely with an 

 imitation of the insect which is visibly or presumably 

 on the water ; he uses the new toy rod ; and he 

 returns nine -tenths of what he catches. In brief, 

 until quite recently, I thought him something more 

 than human. But one day in the past season I dis- 

 covered that a leaven of frailty still lingers in him. 

 It was a cold day, the rise was over, and he was 

 casting a blue-winged olive at a venture, and catching 

 fish withal. Henceforth we shall do all else that he 

 does, but we shall not do this, and then we shall be 

 greater than he. 

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