16 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



largely a matter of opportunity. That one 

 memory is all the friendship opportunity allows 

 us. So with these rivers of a single day. 



But when one has fished a water season after 

 season for five years, then is its friendship a great 

 and living thing. Of that little burn in Mull 

 where one made such hay of the sea-trout one 

 cherishes but a dim picture of dark pools, minia- 

 ture brown-white cataracts, slate-blue hills, a 

 leaden sky, the calling of the moor-fowl, and 

 a heavy basket. But each feature of the long- 

 fished stream is with one at all times each curve 

 and vista, each willow and withy-bed, the unguess- 

 able hatch-hole, the frank, revealing shallow, and 

 the swelling downs and the distant clumps. 

 These things are a possession that nothing can 

 destroy so long as memory serves. Though 

 paralysis should strike one into a living death, 

 while memory were faithful one should yet wander 

 in one's mind (by no means deliriously) through 

 certain green water-meadows, eye busy with a 

 certain stream where stout fish should always 

 be rising. Other friends, older perhaps, dearer 

 even than the river, should stand by the bedside, 

 grieving at one's insensibility to their presence. 

 Blind, deaf, dumb, feeling nothing, how should 

 one cry to them for comfort ? And what comfort 

 could they give ? But the river would come at 



