But it would have taken hundreds to satisfy us after our
lunchless day, and there were other reasons.
One casts for trout. There is no sitting on a mossy stone and watching a
worm guilefully struggling to attract a fish to the hooks. No; one
casts.
Now, I have learned to cast fairly well. On the lawn at home, or in the
middle of a ten-acre lot, cleared, or the center of a lake, I can put
out quite a lot of line. In one cast out of three, I can drop a fly so
that it appears to be committing suicide--which is the correct way. But
in a thicket I am lost. I hold the woman's record for getting the hook
in my hair or the lobe of the Little Boy's ear. I have hung fish high in
trees more times than phonographs have hanged Danny Deever. I can, under
such circumstances (i.e., the thicket), leave camp with a rod, four
six-foot leaders, an expensive English line, and a smile, and return an
hour later with a six-inch trout, a bandaged hand, a hundred and eighty
mosquito bites, no leaders, and no smile.
So we fished little that first evening, and, on the discovery that
candles had been left out of the cook's outfit, we retired early to our
bough beds, which were, as it happened that night, of class A.
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