78 FLY FISHING. 



bring some lusty trout to grass, that had before completely baffled 

 the other's skill and ingenuity. 



But see ! the scholar has another rise at last, though he has 

 missed hooking the fish ; and then startled by what at the 

 moment was somewhat unexpected, and over anxious at the same 

 time to lose none in again offering the tempting lure to the fish 

 who had before risen short without taking his fly he makes his 

 next throw with so much more force than is at all necessary, that 

 off come all the upper joints of his rod with no small splash, souse 

 into the stream, which astonishes him a little, and the fishes a 

 great deal more. Now a result like the last is the common con- 

 sequence of neglecting to take a turn or two with a waxed thread 

 between the wires that are fixed to the ferrules and corresponding 

 joints of the rod for that express purpose ; but which is seldom 

 resorted to, till an occurrence like that above alluded to has oc- 

 curred, at least once in the course of the day. 



But the scholar soon regains his pieces, which his line is fortu- 

 nately strong enough to keep from being carried off by the current, 

 and then he adopts the precaution he ought to have adopted before 

 and is again flogging away as busily yet as fruitlessly as ever, till 

 at length, as he is expecting his flies to pitch with the utmost 

 nicety in a most likely part of the stream, and where he feels con- 

 fident some noble trout must lurk, he has the supreme mortification 

 to discover his stretcher fly, or rather the hook appertaining to it, 

 has caught fast hold of a limb of a lofty oak behind, any attempt 

 to climb which, or to reach the fly even if he could, a single 

 glance at once shows him to be impracticable. And then he feels 

 the lowering consciousness that a man who goes fly fishing ought 

 to have his eyes about him. If indeed an angler had not only the 

 chameleonlike power of looking two ways at once, and distinctly 

 contemplating objects independently of each other, but also a third 

 eye placed in some convenient part of his occiput, just under his 

 bump of philo-progenitiveness for example he would doubtless, 

 as an angler at any rate, derive great advantage from it. Yet as 

 man never was formed so yet, and would cut a mighty queer figure 

 if he was to be, we must all of us be thankful for the two eyes with 

 which providence has blessed us, and make the best use we can of 

 them, and when fly fishing in the neighbourhood of trees and bushes, 

 take care to keep a good look out behind, otherwise a mishap like 

 the scholar's will be pretty certain to occur. Yet a very annoying 



