INTRODUCTORY 21 



fisherman reviews with wonder ; so faint, and far, and 

 insignificant they seem. Griefs, once heart-breaking, 

 are in the retrospect toned and softened to a tender 

 regret. The delights of his pursuit survive alone in 

 memory. 



Looking back along the years, he sees the road his 

 feet have travelled marked, at intervals, by days that 

 rise above the common level. Probably there is one 

 pre-eminent above the rest. It may not have been 

 a day of great achievement : the day distinguished by 

 the capture of his largest trout ; the day he carried 

 home, with pardonable pride, the fish all others had 

 essayed in vain to circumvent ; the day capricious fate 

 surprised him with the success of his life. It may, on 

 the contrary, have been a day of small things : a day 

 without a stirring incident ; a calm, placid, even day on 

 which his thoughts pursued the tenor of their way 

 unvexed by violent emotions either of pleasure or of 

 pain. Just such a day is that enshrined for ever in my 

 memory. It was spent on a Border stream ; a tiny 

 mountain burn, across which, at its broadest, even the 

 angler approaching middle-age might leap without fear 

 of immersion. A prolonged shower had slightly raised 

 the volume of the water and rendered it perceptibly 

 opaque — with an opalescent opacity suggestive of the 



