THE POINT OF VIEW 205 



Certain pleasurable excitement always attends 

 the taking of a good fish by the true angler. 

 Yet, after all, the quality of his gratification 

 should be measured by the method of capture. 

 In angling, as in all other arts, one's taste 

 and discrimination develop in proportion to his 

 opportunity to see, study, and admire the work 

 of greater artists. Even as a knowledge of the 

 better forms of music leads, eventually, to a 

 distaste for the poorer sorts, and as familiarity 

 with the work of great painters leads to disgust 

 with the chromolithograph-like productions of 

 the dauber, so, too, does a knowledge of the 

 higher and more refined sorts of angling lead 

 just as surely to the ultimate abandonment of 

 the grosser methods. One who has learned to 

 cast the fly seldom if ever returns to the days 

 when he was content to sit upon the bank, or 

 the string-piece of a pier, dangling his legs over- 

 board while he watched his cork bobbing up 

 and down, indicating by its motions what might 

 be happening to the bunch of worms at the 

 hook end of the line; and, even as casting the 

 fly leads to the abandonment of the use of bait, 

 so, too, does the dry fly lead to the abandonment 

 of the wet or sunk fly. There can be no question 

 but that the stalking of a rising trout bears to 



