eyeglass. On my way home from my office, I stopped at Leadenhall Market and bought a fowl with all its feathers on. These purchases cost me a great deal of money, but who cares for money where the perfect thrill is in question?
Next morning I was still ungifted with any knack that could be called a knack. The silk broke very vexingly, I found, and the liquid wax was rather ubiquitous, and the hackles did not seem to wind on to the hooks quite so easily as the little treatise said they did; but these were early days to look for great results. During the following Sunday afternoon I called on a friend who boasted himself a tier of flies. In the course of our conversation I mentioned that I had never seen him make a fly, and suggested that he should do so now. He agreed in the most amiable way, sat down there and then at his bench, took a few things out of a cigar-box, and evolved a pale olive in the twinkling of an eye. I said, "Oh, that's how you do it!" He had, as far as I could see, done none of the things which the book laid down as essential. He replied that some did it one way and others another way. That was how he did it. It was, he added, only a little knack that one had to get. He made several other flies for me, and wanted me to try my hand, but I said No, I had no ambition of that kind. I went
