ong whom I would rank myself, combine both these elements of
incompetence. Nature, that made me enthusiastically fond of fishing,
gave me thumbs for fingers, short-sighted eyes, indolence, carelessness,
and a temper which (usually sweet and angelic) is goaded to madness by
the laws of matter and of gravitation. For example: when another man is
caught up in a branch he disengages his fly; I jerk at it till something
breaks. As for carelessness, in boyhood I fished, by preference, with
doubtful gut and knots ill-tied; it made the risk greater, and increased
the excitement if one did hook a trout. I can't keep a fly-book. I
stuff the flies into my pockets at random, or stick them into the leaves
of a novel, or bestow them in the lining of my hat or the case of my
rods. Never, till 1890, in all my days did I possess a landing-net. If
I can drag a fish up a bank, or over the gravel, well; if not, he goes on
his way rejoicing. On the Test I thought it seemly to carry a landing-
net. It had a hinge, and doubled up. I put the handle through a button-
hole of my coat: I saw a big fish rising, I put a dry fly over him; the
idiot took it. Up stream he ran, then down stream, then he yielded to
the rod and came near me. I tried to unship my landing-net from my
button-hole. Vain labour! I twisted and turned the handle, it would not
budge. Finally, I stooped, and attempted to ladle the trout out with the
short net; but he broke the gut, and went off. A landing-net is a
tedious thing to carry, so is a creel, and a creel is, to me, a
superfluity. There is never anything to put in it. If I do catch a
trout, I lay him under a big stone, cover him with leaves, and never find
him again. I often break my top joint; so, as I never carry string, I
splice it with a bit of the line, which I bite off, for I really cannot
be troubled with scissors and I always lose my knife. When a phantom
minnow sticks in my clothes, I snap the gut off, and put on another, so
that when I reach home I look as if a shoal of fierce minnows had
attacked me and hung on like leeches. When a boy, I was--once or twice--a
bait-fisher, but I never carried worms in box or bag. I found them under
big stones, or in the fields, wherever I had the luck. I never tie nor
otherwise fasten the joints of my rod; they often slip out of the sockets
and splash into the water. Mr. Hardy, however, has invented a
joint-fastening which never slips. On the other hand,