56 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



you awhile of purism and purists and things 

 puristic. 



Youth, sir, is proverbially avid of pleasure, and 

 seeks it in a hundred ways, which experience 

 abandons one by one. There was a time when 

 I believed in all honesty that I could gain enjoy- 

 ment by climbing hills, and in that belief I have 

 struggled to the tops of several mountains. Pre- 

 sently reason triumphed, another illusion was dis- 

 carded, and I had advanced one further stage in 

 that eliminating process by which human happi- 

 ness alone can be reached. Now, while in one 

 short summer I mastered the true secret of the 

 hills that they were made to be admired from 

 below I also learned another fact about them : 

 that there is always one more summit to be 

 climbed. So with angling. 



When, as a child, I threaded my hooks through 

 the unprotesting lips of living minnows in the 

 hope of luring the great chubs of the Kennet, I 

 knew that men far more skilful than I used spin- 

 ning baits for jack; and I told myself that one day 

 I should be a man and do likewise. Later, promoted 

 to spinning, I lusted ardently to angle with flies 

 for trout. Then, a loch-fisher, I dreamed of chalk- 

 streams and the mysteries of the floating fly. 

 " There," I said, " is the summit, the ne plus ultra, 

 the last rung," and I vowed ere I died to make one 



