"Don't give up if you don't catch fish; the unsuccessful trip should whet your appetite to try again."—Grover Cleveland.

A preface is either an excuse or an explanation, or both. The Brook Trout needs no excuse, and it is fully explained in the general text of this volume. Nor does the Angler, be he Determined or otherwise, need any excuse, because "our Saviour chose simple fishermen ... St. Peter, St. John, St. Andrew, and St. James, whom he inspired, and He never reproved these for their employment or calling" (Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, 1653). And the Angler—the man—needs no explanation, though it seems ever necessary to define the word.

Webster, himself a profound Angler, must have been unconscious of his gentle bearing, for his definition of "angle" is simply: "to fish," and every Angler knows that merely to fish—to go forth indifferent of correct (humane) tackle, the legal season, and ethical methods in the pursuit—is not the way of the Angler.

I like the explanation of the word by Genio C. Scott: "Angling, a special kind of fishing."

The inspired landscape genius and the kalsominer who shellacs the artist's studio are both painters; so, the gentle Angler with perfect tackle and the mere hand-line fish taker are both fishermen.

The Angler is the highest order of fisherman, and while all Anglers are fishermen there are many fishermen who are not Anglers.

"Anglo-Saxon," writing in the New York Press. October 14, 1915, uses the term "gentleman Anglers." He should have said "gentleman fishermen" (Anglers), because all Anglers are gentlemen, regardless of their business calling, appearance, personality, companionship, etc. When a man, fisherman or no fisherman, develops into an Angler he must first become gentle in order to be of the gentle art. "Angling is the gentle art" (Walton). "The gentle art of angling" (Cotton).

"If true Anglers," says Genio C. Scott, "you are sure to be gentle."

Peter Flint (New York Press, Oct. 15, 1915): "Our most successful Anglers, amateurs as well as professionals."

All Anglers are amateurs, brother Peter. There are no professional Anglers, though there are both amateur and professional fishermen, and those fishermen who are amateurs are Anglers. The word "amateur" seems to be adrift upon the same bewildering tideway as the words "angler" and "angling." "Amateur" hasn't the definition commonly attributed to it—it doesn't signify inefficiency, inexperience, unpracticality, etc., as do the words "beginner," "neophyte," "tyro," etc. An amateur in fishing, or farming, or any other pastime or pursuit, may be far more practical, more experienced, more proficient, and better equipped in tools and paraphernalia than a professional, and he usually is so; he is certainly always so in angling.

Watch your word.

"It is the belief of Acker that hand-line fishing is as good [as], if not better than, the rod and reel kind." (Wandering Angler, New York Press, Aug. 17, 1915.)

Hand-line fishing, as fishing,—though the Tuna Angling Club, of Santa Catalina Island, California, is bound to the use of light rods and fine reels and tells us hand-lines are unsportsmanlike and detrimental to the public interest,—is good (Christ and His disciples sanctioned it), but to say it is as good as or better than rod and reel angling is not convincing. The indifferent fisher can't condemn angling in praising common fishing with any more reason than he might proclaim against cricket playing in favoring carpentry, or vice versa. One might as correctly say hand-line fishing is as good as riding, or driving, or golf, or baseball, or canoeing (of course it is), for fishing without rod and reel and fishing with proper tackle are pursuits as distinct in character as riding a plain horse bareback with a rough halter, and straddling a gallant charger with neat bridle and saddle; or as mere boating upon a refuse creek, and skimming the green billows in a trim yacht.

That the fisher's hand-line and the fisherman's net will take more fish than the Angler's tackle is not of moment, because a stick of dynamite or a cannon filled with leaden pellets or a boy with a market basket will take still more fish than the net and hand-line. Quantity makes fishing "good" with the fisherman; quality delights the Angler. There is no objection to the mere fish-getter filling his boat with fishes with or without tackle, but as the jockey is separated from the sportsman rider and the sailor from the yachtsman so should the quantity fisher and the quality Angler be considered in contrasting spheres. "What a man brings home in his heart after fishing is of more account than what he brings in his basket," says W. J. Long. "Anglers encourage the adoption of angling methods," says Dr. Van Dyke, "which make the wholesale slaughter of fishes impossible and increase the sport of taking a fair number in a fair way."

As chivalric single-missile bow-and-arrow exercise dignifies archery above bunch-arrow work in war, so the gentle use of refined tackle dignifies angling above mere fish getting. Trap shooting is delightful, and more birds are killed than the gunner would bag in marsh and meadow, but is trap shooting therefore more "good" than game-shooting in the glorious fields and forests? No, sir; and though the hand-line fisherman may honestly take half the ocean's yield, still his pursuit and his catch cannot equal and cannot be legitimately compared to the code and the creel of the competent Angler.

C. B.