thrill! Gods! Was there any resisting such a promise? And so simply won! The condition precedent to this unimagined and supreme experience was the mere tying of a fly. At that time I knew that fly-tying was the easiest thing in the world. It wanted a knack. But what was a knack that it should stand in the way of my realising the perfect thrill? Anyone can acquire a knack. A little effort, a little patience, a few failures, and lo! one day the knack comes, and you wonder why you could not do it from the first.
This vision of the perfect thrill was given to me on an early day of a rather recent April. I think, to be as accurate as possible, that it was the first of the month. My whole soul consumed with eagerness, I cabbed it to a tackle-shop and bought a small handbook on fly-tying. I read this book in an hour. I had not been mistaken. Fly-tying was the easiest thing in the world. I cabbed it back to the tackle-shop and bought a vice, some dozens of assorted eyed hooks, many reels of brightly coloured silk, two pairs of delicately curved scissors, half a dozen forceps, a pound of beeswax, a bottle of liquid wax, a quantity of dubbin, some rare furs, and an "indispensable" packet of hackle and wing-feathers. I got, as an afterthought, a few pike scales and a jeweller's
