2 In Pursuit of the Trout 



stream flowed serene and measured then ; 

 but now its pace seems nearly always hurried, 

 and sometimes headlong — a too continuous 

 rush from source to sea. And yet even 

 when the pace is most severe, very many 

 men, closely engaged in arduous affairs, both 

 public and private, are coming more and 

 more to see that the fastest stream runs 

 down the quickest, and that it is good to 

 now and then allow oneself to drift out 

 of the main current, as it were, into some 

 quiet backwater, where energies may be 

 repaired and strength fostered. 



Various are the ways which the busy 

 man, grown idle in order to be presently 

 busy again with more effect, has of filling- 

 in these precious gaps. To take, for instance, 

 those two classes of hard-worked men, poli- 

 ticians and authors, with whose methods the 

 writer happens to be more or less familiar. 

 One leading politician is known to devote 

 many of the golden hours, which he can 

 snatch from State affairs, to the cycle and 

 the golf-links ; a second — whose name, I 



