CHAPTER V 



NOTES FROM A DIARY 



This chapter simply sets out to try and 

 amplify certain notes taken from a fishing 

 diary, in the hope that these may be of 

 some small use to other fishermen in 

 Brittany. Believe me, if the reader finds 

 them dull, they are to the writer infinitely 

 more interesting. Cold comfort this, yet 

 how can things be otherwise ? Can weak 

 words convey a vestige of the inward 

 picture of some special stream — an hour, 

 a moment, we have loved ? Can we give 

 out a fraction of our personal reminis- 

 cence ? Suppose that we could truly 

 paint sky, water, and a leaping fish, the 

 glint of sunlight on the river-bank, all 

 these are impersonal. We have left out 

 Jean Pierre's old beaver hat, that always 

 bobbed between the gorse-tops down 

 every valley track. We may write the 



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