ch new variety as fast as the enticing salesman shows
them to you. You stroll through the streets of Montreal or Quebec and
drop in at every fishing-tackle dealer's to see whether you can find a
few more good flies. Then, when you come to look over your collection at
the critical moment on the bank of a stream, it seems as if you had ten
times too many. And, spite of all, the precise fly that you need is not
there.

You select a couple that you think fairly good, lay them down beside you
in the grass, and go on looking through the book for something better.
Failing to satisfy yourself, you turn to pick up those that you have
laid out, and find that they have mysteriously vanished from the face of
the earth.

Then you struggle with naughty words and relapse into a condition of
mental palsy.

Precipitation is a fault. But deliberation, for a person of precipitate
disposition, is a vice.

The best thing to do in such a case is to adopt some abstract theory of
action without delay, and put it into practice without hesitation. Then
if you fail, you can throw the responsibility on the theory.

Now, in regard to flies there are two theories. The old, conservative
theory is, that on a bright day you should use a dark, dull fly, because
it is less conspicuous. So I followed that theory first and put on a
Great Dun and a Dark Montreal. I cast them delicately over the fish, but
he would not look at them.

Then I perverted myself to the new, radical theory which says that on a
bright day you must use a light, gay fly, because it is more in harmony
with the sky, and therefore less noticeable. Accordingly I put on a
Professor and a Parmacheene Belle; but this combination of learning and
beauty had no attraction for the ouananiche.

Then I fell back on a theory of my own, to the effect that the
ouananiche have an aversion to red, and prefer yellow and brown. So I
tried various combinations of flies in which these colours predominated.

Then I abandoned all theories and went straight through my book, trying
something from every page, and winding up with that lure which the
guides consider infallible,--"a Jock o' Scott that cost fifty cents at
Quebec." But it was all in vain. I was ready to despair.

At this psychological moment I heard behind me a voice of hope,--the
song of a grasshopper: not one of those fat-legged, green-winged
imbeciles that feebly tumble in the summer fields, but a game
grasshopper,--one of those thin-s