XVI THE PHILOSOPHY OF FAILURE *> 



I SOMETIMES wonder how many men really do 

 keep that praiseworthy record of failure, a fishing 

 diary. I have made several spasmodic efforts to do so, 

 but each seems to have been foredoomed to an early 

 death. One does not, as a matter of fact, have captures 

 to record, or worth recording, every time one goes 

 a-fishing, and the accompanying circumstances placed 

 in the column devoted to " remarks " are apt to become 

 monotonous. Thus, when I contemplate my longest 

 sustained chronicle, 1 which extended over the months 

 of a long-past April and May, it gives me no pleasurable 

 thrill to find " Wind east, poor show of fly, fish not 

 moving " set down day after day, with scarce the 

 variation of a word, except to aggravate the sufferings 

 that are now happily over; one day in May, for in- 

 stance, provided a north-east wind, with occasional 

 snowstorms, and no show of fly at all. As to the 

 number of fish killed during those methodical months 

 it is unnecessary to speak. The reader may, however, 

 draw his own conclusions from the fact that at the end 



1 It is no longer so. Since this was written I have tried again. 

 But the diary's principle, I am sorry to say, seems to be modelled 

 on the practice of the sundial horas non numero nisi serenas. 



166 



