Notes and Reminiscences of My Life as an Angler

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The following pages were written merely for the perusal of my children, in order to bring before them, as clearly and faithfully as possible, a picture of their father's life as an angler. When I became aware that many of my personal friends were also desirous to possess a record in which so many of their deeds with rod and line were inscribed together with my own, I yielded to a wish so flattering to myself, and the little work was printed for private circulation among them. The reception which it has met with from the many distin guished anglers whom I am proud to call my friends has been most gratifying, and I am accordingly emboldened to take a further step, and send it forth into the wide field of angling literature, there to abide the criticisms of the general public. During four years I steadily refused to take such a course, feeling persuaded that an autobiography of this character which detailed so many particulars relating to other persons, was more fitly restricted to a limited circle of readers. After however I had received eighty letters begging for its publi cation, together with a vast number of verbal requests, I yielded, in the hope that no one whose name is mentioned in its pages will be in the smallest degree wounded, and that the general reader will deal gently with the numerous deficiencies to which no one can be so keenly alive as the author.

The following pages were written merely for the perusal of my children, in order to bring before them, as clearly and faithfully as possible, a picture of their father's life as an angler. When I became aware that many of my personal friends were also desirous to possess a record in which so many of their deeds with rod and line were inscribed together with my own, I yielded to a wish so flattering to myself, and the little work was printed for private circulation among them. The reception which it has met with from the many distin guished anglers whom I am proud to call my friends has been most gratifying, and I am accordingly emboldened to take a further step, and send it forth into the wide field of angling literature, there to abide the criticisms of the general public. During four years I steadily refused to take such a course, feeling persuaded that an autobiography of this character which detailed so many particulars relating to other persons, was more fitly restricted to a limited circle of readers. After however I had received eighty letters begging for its publi cation, together with a vast number of verbal requests, I yielded, in the hope that no one whose name is mentioned in its pages will be in the smallest degree wounded, and that the general reader will deal gently with the numerous deficiencies to which no one can be so keenly alive as the author.