way without crying out, "What luck?"

Here, indeed, is an epitome of the gentle art. Here is the spirit
of it embodied in a word and paying its respects to you with its
native accent. Here you see its secret charms unconsciously
disclosed. The attraction of angling for all the ages of man, from
the cradle to the grave, lies in its uncertainty. 'Tis an affair of
luck.

No amount of preparation in the matter of rods and lines and hooks
and lures and nets and creels can change its essential character.
No excellence of skill in casting the delusive fly or adjusting the
tempting bait upon the hook can make the result secure. You may
reduce the chances, but you cannot eliminate them. There are a
thousand points at which fortune may intervene. The state of the
weather, the height of the water, the appetite of the fish, the
presence or absence of other anglers--all these indeterminable
elements enter into the reckoning of your success. There is no
combination of stars in the firmament by which you can forecast the
piscatorial future. When you go a-fishing, you just take your
chances; you offer yourself as a candidate for anything that may be
going; you try your luck.

There are certain days that are favourites among anglers, who regard
them as propitious for the sport. I know a man who believes that
the fish always rise better on Sunday than on any other day in the
week. He complains bitterly of this supposed fact, because his
religious scruples will not allow him to take advantage of it. He
confesses that he has sometimes thought seriously of joining the
Seventh-Day Baptists.