Highlands_.




THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER


These papers do not boast of great sport. They are truthful, not like
the tales some fishers tell. They should appeal to many sympathies.
There is no false modesty in the confidence with which I esteem myself a
duffer, at fishing. Some men are born duffers; others, unlike persons of
genius, become so by an infinite capacity for not taking pains. Others,
again, among 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