• EPHEMERAL THINGS
To be a trout fisherman and never turn to philosophy is almost impossible. Sooner or later the ways of trout teach an angler that he must wait upon nature and, although he may think that his own efforts can :her things to a small degree, his life as an angler is really governed by ephemeral things—the feeding of trout controlled by the hatching of flies. A hatch of duns delights the angler and a hatch of that little black insect (Hilaria), better known as the Fisherman's Curse, can break his heart. I have had two evenings by the water recently when all at once the Curse came on and the trout would take nothing else, and one afternoon about a week ago the lethargic alder fly, which is not a water insect at all, began to be blown on to the lake. As it settled on stones and boulders and even on my hat, I put on an artificial alder and caught fish, for while the Curse appears in such hundreds of thousands that there is small chance of an artificial Wing taken, the alder rarely falls on the water even in hundreds. Between hatches, when the lake is lifeless, one begins to consider philosophy, and with reason.
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