THE LIGHT 101 



in the perfunctory manner of the hopeless. 

 One does not expect sport, and does not 

 offer the fish a fair chance to give it. 



Such is the genesis of almost all our 

 principles of angling, which, it will be 

 observed, are principles of taboo. It is 

 much easier for any of us to say what 

 weather will not do than it is to say what 

 will ; but are we generally right in our 

 taboos ? I doubt it ; and, as I have made 

 careful experiments, there is cause for the 

 cheerful misgiving. One May afternoon 

 I fished carefully over three miles of well- 

 stocked water, and returned with an empty 

 creel. There was a little wind from the 

 west, sufficient to make an attractive 

 ripple here and there ; but how languid 

 the gray clouds were, and the air how life- 

 less ! Suddenly, and without premedita- 

 tion, I said, "Is it really so? Would the sky 

 and the air seem languorous and dull if I 

 had fiilled my basket to the brim, as a few 

 days ago I filled it on this very stretch ? " 

 Truthfully I could answer that they 

 would not. The grayness and the languor 



