PREFACE. 3 



hours, nor fingered money, nor caught trains, 

 nor bored any of my fellows, nor lied, nor 

 sinned, nor betted, nor breathed used up air, 

 forms at least a comfortable confession, which, 

 when repeated day after day for some weeks 

 cannot but restore health and nerves to a 

 normal condition. 



Then as to age. ' Staleness ' in fishing as 

 understood by a boxer is so slow a process that 

 the angler hardly feels it. I met a man at the 

 " Isaac Walton " who was spinning a minnow 

 at the age of 86 and who told me he had fished 

 the Dove for seventy years. A young and active 

 man can make fly fishing quite a strenuous 

 sport, walk eight miles in heavyish kit, crouch, 

 stoop and crawl until he tires himself out 

 completely even before he faces the long tramp 

 home. A middle-aged man can laze and smoke 

 half the day and yet do> well in the basket 

 filling line. Or an old man can take the air 

 by the river-side and still enjoy himself with 

 very little exertion. To leave a stool or an 

 easy chair in an office after a year's sedentary 

 work and then rush off to Switzerland and tramp 

 for ten hours a day during a three weeks 

 holiday is a poor way physically, of restoring 

 tone, and in a man past forty it probably 

 does his heart no good, although it will harden 

 his calves. 



Like many other City men I have had to 

 take my chance on open or club water. No 

 solitudes of Ducal stream stocked with unpricked 

 three pounders have "ever floated a fly of mine, 



