KINSHIP WITH THE ARTS 7 



is a superficial view. It is natural to 

 any one who has either never used rod 

 and line at all, or has done so, in a 

 casual manner, only when among a 

 party of sportsmen at some country- 

 house ; but to the practised fisherman it 

 will betray a lack of understanding. 

 Paradoxical as the notion may seem, 

 much of the fascination of the pursuit 

 of trout, which never stales, springs from 

 the knowledge that the pursuit will often 

 be unsuccessful. Man, when critically 

 he examines the habits and the interests 

 of his leisure times, must realise that he 

 is a being of strange complexity. He 

 will cheerfully play billiards for an hour 

 or so after dinner every night from youth 

 until in old age the cue trembles in his 

 hand ; but if one of the incidents of 

 penal servitude were the daily duty of 

 playing plain against spot until one or 

 the other was a thousand up the thought 

 of gaol would acquire a new and har- 

 rowing horror. If bridge were not a 

 voluntary dissipation, attractive because 



