PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 247 



son ! When I had faith in the idea that all luck 

 depended upon the use of exactly the right fly for 

 the time and the occasion for early morning and 

 for the close of day, for sunshine and shade, for 

 fair weather and foul, for still water and rapids, 

 for shallow water and pools, for river and brook, 

 and for this and for that interminably, I was 

 kept pleasantly busy two-thirds of my time hunt- 

 ing for the right fly to take trout where no trout 

 lay to be taken. 



On first reaching these rapids many years ago, 

 it chanced that I had lost my leader by carelessly 

 using my fly-line as a troll through the still water. 

 A large fish had taken one of the flies when I ex- 

 pected no such visitor, and by a careless movement 

 of my rod, fish, leader and fly incontinently retired 

 in indissoluble union, to come back to me no more 

 forever. My tackling was in a boat far in the 

 rear, and I had no patience, with the inviting rap- 

 ids and promising eddies before me, to await its 

 coming. I had " in my mind's eye, Horatio," just 

 the dazzling ibis I wished to use. I was sure that 

 that and nothing else would bring abundant grist 

 to my mill. But I had no ibis, and was about to 

 give up in sullen silence, and await the arrival of 

 the tardy rear guard for what I deemed to be in- 

 dispensable to success, when my guide suggested a 

 combination of red and blue flannel as a substitute. 



