faculties (combined with a complete lack of any sign that the river held fish) produced its inevitable effect. My vigilance relaxed. The lustre of my purism became dimmed. I put on a large Wickham.
At the first cast a swift took it as it was falling. The force of habit struck—I am myself incapable of such an act—and after a short contest the misguided bird was brought to hand, unhooked, and returned to the air. The Wickham, dressed on a No. 1 hook, I have always found peculiarly deadly to swifts. This particular specimen, however, proved wholly innocuous to the trout, if trout there were.
Under such conditions luncheon is doubly welcome. One eats with no sense of time lost. One's enjoyment of food—a very proper enjoyment—is not marred by any anxiety about the river. One lingers over the cigarette that follows and the cigarette that follows it. One does not hurry. There are no fish anywhere at all. One dismisses fish from one's mind and takes one's pleasure in mastication, like a wise man. So I lunched. It was a good lunch, thoughtfully combined by a mistress of the art. There was marmalade in it and a pottle (I think it was a pottle) of ripe strawberries, also half a lobster, lettuce, many things. I have seldom had a better
