f carefulness about details. Let the "casual" and
regardless who read it--the gatless, as they say in Suffolk--ponder the
lesson which it teaches: a lesson which no amount of bitter experience
has ever impressed on the unprincipled narrator. Never do anything
carelessly whether in fishing or in golf, and carry this important maxim
even into the most serious affairs of life. Many a battle has been lost,
no doubt, by lack of ammunition, or by plenty of ammunition which did not
happen to suit the guns; and many a salmon has been lost, ay, and many a
trout, for want of carefulness, and through a culpable inattention to the
soundness of your gut, and tackle generally. What fiend is it that
prompts a man just to try a hopeless cast, in a low water, without
testing his tackle? As sure as you do that, up comes the fish, and with
his first dash breaks your casting line, and leaves you lamenting. This
doctrine I preach, being my own "awful example." "Bad and careless
little boy," my worthy master used to say at school; and he would have
provoked a smile in other circumstances. But Mr. Trotter, of the
Edinburgh Academy, had something about him (he usually carried it in the
tail-pocket of his coat) which inspired respect and discouraged ribaldry.
Would that I had listened to Mr. Trotter; would that I had corrected, in
early life, the happy-go-lucky disposition to scatter my Greek accents,
as it were, with a pepper-caster, to fish with worn tackle, and,
generally, to make free with the responsibilities of life and literature.
It is too late to amend, but others may learn wisdom from this spectacle
of deserved misfortune and absolute discomfiture.

I am not myself a salmon-fisher, though willing to try that art again,
and though this is a tale of salmon. To myself the difference between
angling for trout and angling for salmon is like the difference between a
drawing of Lionardo's, in silver point, and a loaded landscape by
MacGilp, R.A. Trout-fishing is all an idyll, all delicacy--that is,
trout-fishing on the Test or on the Itchen. You wander by clear water,
beneath gracious poplar-trees, unencumbered with anything but a slim rod
of Messrs. Hardy's make, and a light toy-box of delicate flies. You need
seldom wade, and the water is shallow, the bottom is of silver gravel.
You need not search all day at random, but you select a rising trout, and
endeavour to lay the floating fly delicately over him. If you part with
him,