OF MAcARTHUR 89 



more successfully exalted one set of men at the 

 expense of another. You would suppose that any 

 fool can go and throw a blue upright into the 

 Barle at Dulverton and pull it out again with 

 a trout on it. You would imagine that no chalk- 

 stream fish may be lured at a less distance than 

 seventy yards. 



Now there is no special merit in fishing with 

 a long line. No good fisherman, wet or dry, gives 

 a trout an inch more than is absolutely necessary. 

 Perhaps, of the two, the wet-fly man uses the 

 longer line, and he certainly, if he means to catch 

 fish, throws as "fine," by which I understand 

 "light," as the wet condition of his lure will let 

 him. But " fine and far off " remains the special 

 property of the dry-fly school, and the wet-fly 

 men continue to go about under the imputation 

 of " chucking it and chancing it." This shows 

 how important it is to be first in any field, even 

 of mutual recrimination. The arrogant dry-fly 

 school has fastened " chuck and chance it " on the 

 other fellows for ever, and nobody pays any 

 attention to their answering "creeping and 

 crawling " beyond stamping it vulgar and jealous 

 abuse. 



This cheap sneer at the wet-fly man has proved 

 so successful that he himself has come to believe 

 that it is true. He forgets that his knowledge 



