"Don't you find that rather tiresome every day?" he asked. "If you would dress your line properly in the winter you would never have to mess about with fat and things. A pint of shellac dissolved in ten ounces of beeswax and boiled for three hours with an equal quantity of bear's grease, ketchup, spermaceti, liquorice, and rainwater, strained through butter muslin, and"
"I am no cook," said I, "but it is kind of you to give me the recipe." So it was. People always mean kindly when they teach other people their business. My suspicion grew. To make quite sure, I asked, "Have you done anything yet?" He stiffened. "There has been no fly," he replied, in the voice with which people are put in theit places. Then he went away.
It is even so.
Purfling is a Purist.
I am not a Purist.
The art by which I humbly seek to earn my bread induces, or should induce, the habit of observation. Thus I am an observer of men, and among men of fishermen, and among fishermen of dry-fly fishermen.
Purfling being gone, let us lean together on this wooden bridge—the rail is exactly the most comfortable height—and let me discourse to
