OF THE CRACKLING OF THORNS 115 



saw me in my everyday clothes you would never 

 dream of thinking me a comical object ; you 

 would not notice me at all. I am quite in- 

 conspicuous as a general rule, but when I go 

 fishing these painful demonstrations greet me from 

 everyone not fortunate enough to dwell beside 

 a chalk-stream. It can only be my rig. But 

 what, I repeat, am I to do ? I believe that I may 

 look a little more out of the way than some other 

 anglers. At no time am I a dapper man, and 

 with the large excuses which the craft affords me, 

 a native carelessness slides easily into that whole- 

 hearted lack of decorum which is best observed 

 emergent from a field of ripe grain. I wear my 

 oldest clothes, and how old they are it is now 

 quite impossible to say, but they are delicious 

 to my body, and barbed wire can do them no harm 

 whatever. I have seen natty anglers, men in new 

 clothes with waders that fitted them like skin, 

 brogues that would have done credit to any lady's 

 drawing-room, snowy linen, jewellery, buttonholes 

 one even with his oil bottle in a little bag of 

 chamois leather, as if it had been a watch fresh 

 home from the makers. I have dubbed them 

 carpet-fishermen, but in my heart I knew that 

 they some of them, most of them killed more 

 fish than I. The unconventional attire in which 

 the American humorous artist loves to dress his 



