



Produced by Donald Lainson





FISHERMAN'S LUCK AND SOME OTHER UNCERTAIN THINGS

by Henry van <DW18>


     "Now I conclude that not only in Physicke, but likewise in
     sundry more certaine arts, fortune hath great share in
     them."

     M. DE MONTAIGNE: Divers Events.


DEDICATION TO MY LADY GRAYGOWN


Here is the basket; I bring it home to you. There are no great fish in
it. But perhaps there may be one or two little ones which will be to
your taste. And there are a few shining pebbles from the bed of the
brook, and ferns from the cool, green woods, and wild flowers from the
places that you remember. I would fain console you, if I could, for the
hardship of having married an angler: a man who relapses into his mania
with the return of every spring, and never sees a little river without
wishing to fish in it. But after all, we have had good times together as
we have followed the stream of life towards the sea. And we have passed
through the dark days without losing heart, because we were comrades.
So let this book tell you one thing that is certain. In all the life of
your fisherman the best piece of luck is just YOU.



CONTENTS

   I.  Fisherman's Luck

  II.  The Thrilling Moment

 III.  Talkability

  IV.  A Wild Strawberry

   V.  Lovers and Landscape

  VI.  A Fatal Success

 VII.  Fishing in Books

VIII. A Norwegian Honeymoon

  IX.  Who Owns the Mountains?

   X.  A Lazy, Idle Brook

  XI.  The Open Fire

 XII.  A Slumber Song




FISHERMAN'S LUCK


Has it ever fallen in your way to notice the quality of the greetings
that belong to certain occupations?

There is something about these salutations in kind which is singularly
taking and grateful to the ear. They are as much better than an ordinary
"good day" or a flat "how are you?" as a folk-song of Scotland or the
Tyrol is better than the futile love-ditty of the drawing-room. They
have a spicy and rememberable flavour. They speak to the imagination and
point the way to treasure-trove.

There is a touch of dignity in them, too, for all they are so free and
easy--the dignity of independence, the native spirit of one who takes
for granted that his mode of living has a right to make its own forms of
speech. I admire a man who does not hesitate to salute the world in the
dialect of his calling.

How salty and stimulating, for example, is the sailorman's hail of "Ship
ahoy!" It is like a breeze laden with briny odours and a pleasant dash
of spray. The miners in some parts of Germany have a good greeting for
their dusky trade. They cry to one who is going down the shaft, "Gluck
auf!" All the perils of an underground adventure and all the joys
of seeing the sun again are compressed into a word. Even the trivial
salutation which the telephone has lately created and claimed for its
peculiar use--"Hello, hello"--seems to me to have a kind of fitness
and fascination. It is like a thoroughbred bulldog, ugly enough to be
attractive. There is a lively, concentrated, electric air about it. It
makes courtesy wait upon dispatch, and reminds us that we live in an age
when it is necessary to be wide awake.

I have often wished that every human employment might evolve its own
appropriate greeting. Some of them would be queer, no doubt; but
at least they would be an improvement on the wearisome iteration of
"Good-evening" and "Good-morning," and the monotonous inquiry, "How
do you do?"--a question so meaningless that it seldom tarries for an
answer. Under the new and more natural system of etiquette, when you
passed the time of day with a man you would know his business, and the
salutations of the market-place would be full of interest.

As for my chosen pursuit of angling (which I follow with diligence when
not interrupted by less important concerns), I rejoice with every true
fisherman that it has a greeting all its own and of a most honourable
antiquity. There is no written record of its origin. But it is quite
certain that since the days after the Flood, when Deucalion


     "Did first this art invent
      Of angling, and his people taught the same,"


two honest and good-natured anglers have never met each other by the way
without crying out, "What luck?"

Here, indeed, is an epitome of the gentle art. Here is the spirit of
it embodied in a word and paying its respects to you with its native
accent. Here you see its secret charms unconsciously disclosed. The
attraction of angling for all the ages of man, from the cradle to the
grave, lies in its uncertainty. 'Tis an affair of luck.

No amount of preparation in the matter of rods and lines and hooks
and lures and nets and creels can change its essential character.
No excellence of skill in casting the delusive fly or adjusting the
tempting bait upon the hook can make the result secure. You may reduce
the chances, but you cannot eliminate them. There are a thousand points
at which fortune may intervene. The state of the weather, the height of
the water, the appetite