APOLOGIA
Having read through the foregoing pages, I am (indeed, I could hardly
fail to be) conscious that I have written dogmatically, that I have used
the first person singular with some freedom—more freedom than I had
supposed. But I am not going to change it. What I had to say, stretched
over a period of years, has been too strong for me. I wanted to
elaborate a system, and all I have done is to tell my personal
experiences in search of a system. If I have written positively, I would
not have it supposed that I claim to be a master of angling, or that I
do not incur by the water-side my full share—perhaps more than my full
share—of mistakes, tangles, bungles, disasters. But, for all that, I
claim to be entitled to speak positively of the things which I have
tried and tested for myself and know of my own knowledge. No man can
really know either these same things or any other things by reading them
in a book or by accepting them upon any authority, whether it be that of
Mr. F. M. Halford or another.
Nothing presents itself to any two minds in an identical light. We all
see the multicoloured facets of truth from a different angle. No
experience is the same to two diverse idiosyncrasies, and the only help
which the writing of a book of this kind can be to others is, not in the
laying down of rules, not in the preaching or advocating of systems, not
in teaching that which the writer has beaten out by his own experience,
but in hints which start or help trains of observation or inquiry in the
reader’s mind, so as to stimulate him to work out, and prove, by
personal thought and experiment, to make his own, the conclusions which
his own personality is capable of drawing from the test.
In this way only is progress possible. In this, and in doing something
to assure that, in the new learning and in the new systems which come
along, that which is of value in the systems of the past shall not be
forgotten, but shall be transmuted to the uses of the present and the
future, is all the justification I can plead for the foregoing pages.
In giving records of my own experience by the water-side rather than in
laying down a system, I am not asking others to do as I do because I say
it, or to accept anything from me. I would have no weight allowed by any
man to tradition or authority until it is proved by himself; no man’s
words accepted as final because they are his; everything questioned,
tested, and brought to the dock of practical experience. If I have
ventured, indirectly, to preach at all, the sum of my preaching is not a
system, a method, but an attitude of mind—the importance of being
earnest, the power of faith, the observant eye, the unfettered judgment,
independence of tradition, and, above all, the inquiring mind.
With these words I commit my pages to the judgment or kindness of my
brother anglers with a cordial
“TIGHT LINES.”
EXPLICIT.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.