Angling Sketches | Page 5

like the serpent
towards him, my fly always fixes in a nettle, a haycock, a rose-bush, or
whatnot, behind me. I undo it, or break it, and put up another, make a
cast, and, "plop," all the line falls in with a splash that would frighten a
crocodile. The fish's big black fin goes cutting the stream above, and
there is a sauve qui peut of trout in all directions.
I once did manage to make a cast correctly: the fly went over the fish's
nose; he rose; I hooked him, and he was a great silly brute of a grayling.
The grayling is the deadest-hearted and the foolishest-headed fish that
swims. I would as lief catch a perch or an eel as a grayling. This is the
worst of it--this ambition of the duffer's, this desire for perfection, as if
the golfing imbecile should match himself against Mr. Horace
Hutchinson, or as the sow of the Greek proverb challenged Athene to
sing. I know it all, I deplore it, I regret the evils of ambition; but c'est
plus fort que moi. If there is a trout rising well under the pendant
boughs that trail in the water, if there is a brake of briars behind me, a
strong wind down stream, for that trout, in that impregnable situation, I
am impelled to fish. If I raise him I strike, miss him, catch up in his tree,
swish the cast off into the briars, break my top, break my heart,
but--that is the humour of it. The passion, or instinct, being in all senses
blind, must no doubt be hereditary. It is full of sorrow and bitterness
and hope deferred, and entails the mockery of friends, especially of the
fair. But I would as soon lay down a love of books as a love of fishing.
Success with pen or rod may be beyond one, but there is the pleasure of
the pursuit, the rapture of endeavour, the delight of an impossible chase,
the joys of nature--sky, trees, brooks, and birds. Happiness in these
things is the legacy to us of the barbarian. Man in the future will enjoy
bricks, asphalte, fog, machinery, "society," even picture galleries, as
many men and most women do already. We are fortunate who inherit
the older, not "the new spirit"--we who, skilled or unskilled, follow in
the steps of our father, Izaak, by streams less clear, indeed, and in
meadows less fragrant, than his. Still, they are meadows and streams,
not wholly dispeopled yet of birds and trout; nor can any defect of art,
nor certainty of laborious disappointment, keep us from the waterside
when April comes.
Next to being an expert, it is well to be a contented duffer: a man who
would fish if he could, and who will pleasure himself by flicking off his

flies, and dreaming of impossible trout, and smoking among the sedges
Hope's enchanted cigarettes. Next time we shall be more skilled, more
fortunate. Next time! "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow."
Grey hairs come, and stiff limbs, and shortened sight; but the spring is
green and hope is fresh for all the changes in the world and in ourselves.
We can tell a hawk from a hand-saw, a March Brown from a Blue Dun;
and if our success be as poor as ever, our fancy can dream as well as
ever of better things and more fortunate chances. For fishing is like life;
and in the art of living, too, there are duffers, though they seldom give
us their confessions. Yet even they are kept alive, like the incompetent
angler, by this undying hope: they will be more careful, more skilful,
more lucky next time. The gleaming untravelled future, the bright
untried waters, allure us from day to day, from pool to pool, till, like
the veteran on Coquet side, we "try a farewell throw," or, like Stoddart,
look our last on Tweed.

A BORDER BOYHOOD

A fisher, says our father Izaak, is like a poet: he "must be born so." The
majority of dwellers on the Border are born to be fishers, thanks to the
endless number of rivers and burns in the region between the Tweed
and the Coquet--a realm where almost all trout-fishing is open, and
where, since population and love of the sport have increased, there is
now but little water that merits the trouble of putting up a rod.
Like the rest of us in that country, I was born an angler, though under
an evil star, for, indeed, my labours have not been blessed, and are
devoted to fishing rather than to the catching of fish. Remembrance can
scarcely recover, "nor time bring back to time," the days when I was
not busy at the waterside; yet the feat is not