taxed in the preliminary stages, and the victory
came only after a long battle with difficulties. The standard volumes
he produced on the subject of dressing, and the kindred subject of the
entomological side of it, are conclusive evidence of what came of it
all. "Halford as a fly-dresser," however, is a topic too big to handle
in a chapter which merely aims at rambling recollections of him by the
waterside, and indeed it can only be dealt with by a master in the art
of fly-dressing.

In his early days at Houghton, Halford went to John Hammond's shop in
Winchester just before the opening of the 1879 fishing season to buy
flies, and there met, and was introduced by the rubicund John to, a
tall, not to say gaunt, gentleman, who was the most famous of the
Hampshire trout fishers, none other than Marryat himself. This was the
beginning of a close, life-long friendship between the two men.
Halford was at all times most grateful to any helper, and never failed
freely to acknowledge assistance received. Whether he took advice
proffered or not was another matter; he sometimes did it all the same,
but he was always grateful. Words would fail to describe his
appreciation of such co-workers as Marryat at the beginning, and
Williamson at the end of the labours which are embodied in the series
of books which preceded the _Autobiography_. They were co-workers in
everything; hard workers, too. I have heard men lightly joke about
these worthies going about the meadows with a bug-net and lifting
individual ephemerals from the surface of the stream. Let those laugh
that win. It meant collecting hundreds of tiny insects, selecting the
fittest, preparing, preserving, and mounting them. It meant the
endless autopsy of fish and the patient searching of their entrails.
To stand by while Halford and Marryat with their scissors, forceps, and
whatnot laid out the contents of a trout's stomach, and bent low in
separating and identifying the items, putting what were worthy of it
under a microscope, and proceeding all the while as if the round world
offered no other pursuit half so worthy of concentrated attention, was
most fascinating. Many a time was I a spectator--I fear sometimes an
irreverent one--of this ritual, but always privileged and welcome;
always, of course, sympathetic, and always in a way envious of the
qualities of mind and extraordinary knowledge which made the whole work
a labour of love to them.

It so fell out that