AN OPEN LETTER TO WILLIAM SENIOR 



MY DEAR RED SPINNER, 



Only the other day I found in a bookseller's cata- 

 logue your Waterside Sketches with the word " scarce " 

 against it. I already possess three copies, one the gift of the 

 author, but I very nearly wrote off for a fourth because 

 one cannot have too much of so good a thing. What 

 restrained me really was honest altruism. " Hold," I 

 said to myself, " there must be some worthy man who has 

 no copy at all. Let him have a chance." For it is a melan- 

 choly fact that Red Spinner's books have been out of 

 print an unconscionable while, only to be obtained in 

 the second-hand market, and even there with difficulty. 



I am not surprised at this (failing new editions at 

 rather frequent intervals), but as a friend of man, and 

 especially of man the angler, I am sorry. I believe I 

 have read almost everything that has been written on 

 the subject of fishing which comes within ordinary 

 scope, and a certain amount which is outside that 

 scope, and I have amassed fishing books to the number 

 of several hundred. There is, however, comparatively 

 little of all this considerable literature that I keep on a 

 special shelf for reading and re-reading, a couple of 

 dozen volumes maybe and a quarter of those Red 

 Spinner's. Realising what a pleasure and refreshment 

 these books are to me and how often one or other of 

 them companions the evening tobacco, I can the better 

 appreciate the loss occasioned to other anglers by their 

 gradual removal from the lists of the obtainable. 



But not very long ago I heard the good news that you 

 had another volume on the stocks, and I felt that the 



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