go fishing." I stared at the sinful carpenter, who swung along
leisurely in the May sunshine, keeping just ahead of his dog. To leave
one's job in order to go fishing! How illogical!

Years bring the reconciling mind. The world grows big enough to include
within its scheme both the instructive political economist and the
truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder
to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under
the eaves last night--a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the
December sleet crackling against the window-panes--in order to varnish
a certain fly-rod. Now rods ought to be put in order in September, when
the fishing closes, or else in April, when it opens. To varnish a rod
in December proves that one possesses either a dilatory or a childishly
anticipatory mind. But before uncorking the varnish bottle, it occurred
to me to examine a dog-eared, water-stained fly-book, to guard against
the ravages of possible moths. This interlude proved fatal to the
varnishing. A half hour went happily by in rearranging the flies. Then,
with a fisherman's lack of sequence, as I picked out here and there a
plain snell-hook from the gaudy feathered ones, I said to myself with a
generous glow at the heart: "Fly-fishing has had enough sacred poets
celebrating it already. Is n't there a good deal to be said, after all,
for fishing with a worm?"

Could there be a more illogical proceeding? And here follows the
treatise,--a Defense of Results, an Apology for Opportunism,--conceived
in agreeable procrastination, devoted to the praise of the
inconsequential angleworm, and dedicated to a childish memory of a
whistling carpenter and his fat dog.

Let us face the worst at the very beginning. It shall be a shameless