316 Fly-rods and Fly-tackle. 



fished the water in alternate five-minute intervals, chang- 

 ing and rechanging the fly, but though we took others 

 which would elsewhere be accounted large fish, yet he, 

 upon whom we had set our hearts, was proof against 

 temptation. 



I have caught as large, perhaps larger, trout since, but 

 never in such a location. And to this day, and as long as 

 I live and cast a fly, the loss of that fish will be a sore 

 spot in my memory. Even now while I write, for the 

 thousandth time the scene in every detail is present be- 

 fore me, and I wonder could I have played him his half 

 hour in the water above, or would he, despite my every 

 effort, have shot through the sluice into the pool below 

 the dam, and what could I then have done to save him ? 



I have asked I will ask this question whenever mem- 

 ory recalls the picture, but its solution, alas! I shall never 

 know. 



Oh, delusive phantom of hope ! How wretched would 

 the lot of us poor mortals be were it not for you ! 



Men who fancy they could remodel the scheme of 

 this terrestrial globe, in whole or in part, to its im- 

 provement, are perhaps as common as other species of 

 " cranks." But the most ignorant, or, what amounts to 

 the same tning, the most cranky, would hardly claim 

 that even he could better that most beneficent factor in 

 the happiness of mankind, which so distorts our mental 

 view of the past that with lapse of time its disappoint- 

 ments and discomforts fade from memory, while the 

 recollection of its pleasures becomes purer and brighter 

 with the passing years. It is not the real thing we 

 anglers see that mixture of pain and pleasure of which 

 almost every incident of man's life on this earth is com- 

 posed when, even in the privacy of our own inner con- 



