# An Angler at Large/Chapter 41

This evening I took a trout of three and a half pounds. I do not boast about it. It is nothing super-troutish. But it is the largest brown trout I have ever had. It is so obviously the largest that I have ever had, that I have not only weighed it on my own spring, but also on the kitchen scales which I know to be accurate. I tremble to think of the weight to which, when I have time, I shall calculate it on the basis of my own spring's verdict. For my present purpose it is enough that it is my largest trout.
I am continually finding resemblances between angling and life. This is not at all surprising. And I take no credit to myself for it. One can (everybody does) draw parallels between life and any pursuit whatever. The only thing that limits one in this direction is one's own speed and endurance in the covering of paper with words or in dictation to the phonograph, supposing one to be an author of sufficient eminence to employ one of those ​very convenient aids to literature. For as the part possesses many properties of the whole—the finger, for example, of the body, the leaf of the tree, the hay of the haystack, the note of the melody, the drop of the ink, the turf of the lawn, the—I have no phonograph—so, angling being but a part of life, and golf being a part of life, and commerce and wine-bibbing and the adjusting of averages and hanging head downwards from a trapeze with a colleague in one's teeth and studying the Gorilla language and—(really I must get one)—and other things being but parts of life, it follows that the incidents of the greater are reflected in those of the less.
Perhaps I have found the resemblance most marked in this affair of this, my greatest trout. Let me give you a short account of the taking. If you have any humanity at all, you will not deny me this. You need not listen. But I must tell. See, now. There will be a line of dots presently. That will mean that I have done. Then you can tell me about your largest trout, and the exact number of yards he ran out, and all the rest of it. That will be much more amusing for you.
It happened in this way.
The place was Crab Hatch. I have hardly ever come to Crab Hatch without finding something ​on the move, if it has only been some old horse-trout minnowing in the glide. On the blankest days Crab Hatch will offer evidence that the river is inhabited. It is impossible to be utterly despondent just before reaching Crab Hatch. And in the late evening it is a solemn and choice spot. The water circles there eternally, and you never know what you may get your hook into. A pounder in that rapid current gives the effect of the great Leviathan himself, and the reel screeches and one's heart leaps and the fine strong excitement is yours, yea, though the fish go back. I cannot allot any but the first place to Crab Hatch. It is certainly the best spot on the water.
I arrived about eight o'clock.
Ten minutes after I got there I saw a paltry little rise just on the hump of gravel where the glide is (and the young graylings are). I cursed it, because I had hoped to find rising to-night the Immense Fish which last night rose twice in the still below the glide. But though I waited his pleasure for several more seconds, nothing happened to that mirror of the western glory. Patience, after sunset, does not reside within forty miles of me. I got out line and threw despondently to the gravel hump a red quill, to be precise, dressed on a number two or thereabout hook. Since I was not in luck in the matter of the ​Immense Fish, if I put a young grayling down so much the better. My fly fell about ten yards west of the spot at which I had aimed.
Immediately I was playing something of quite respectable strength. It jagged downwards, and I said to my heart, "A grayling of dimensions!" It proceeded down stream, jagging always, and I never saw it until I had followed it fifty yards. Then it showed—yellow. I thought, "The gut is frayed," and stepped up to my middle in water disguised as mud. Subsequently I found myself still connected with the fish. Ten hours (was it?) later I performed a sort of tilting at the ring with trout and landing net (my miserable little landing net) and grassed him. Then (after butchery), while my spring balance, groaning, sank to three, my soul rose towards the zenith. I had topped three pounds. The years fell away from my shoulders.
Thus the great prize came to me, through no special skill or care or pertinacity of mine. It is impossible to draw any moral from the incident which is not quite immoral. I cannot say, "Behold what comes of sticking to it," or "Thus, young man, by perfecting oneself in the use of one's weapons, when the opportunity arises one is found ready to seize it," because I threw without any ​dogged purpose to achieve, but rather with the peevish object of annoying a small fish which I did not at all wish to catch. Also, I threw infamously. Also, I ought to have lost my trout, not once, but several times, while playing it. Also, I was extremely pleased when I had landed it. I can only say, "Observe the resemblance between this affair and that business of life in which we are all engaged. To the undeserving the good things go. Industry is in most cases its own reward. A complete abstention from toiling and spinning plus a raiment that outshines Solomon are the marks of others than field lilies. The wicked flourish and die in their beds. How is one, in short, to account for the undeserving rich upon the accepted principles of morality?" One can't. It is simpler to account for the accepted principles of morality as being the invention of the undeserving rich. If it were so, there is genius in it.
My grandfather died worth a lot of money. Why? Because he took a sporting chance and it came off. Had he not done this I should now be competing for a sandwich-board with my betters. Granted that my grandfather deserved his luck, granted that his application to his business of selling bars of iron made him fit to understand the ​possibilities that lay in his sporting chance. But what about me? I have a competence; I eat three square meals a day; I wear warm, if slovenly clothes; I go about at my pleasure; I sit in the dress circle; I travel second-class; I subscribe to Boots; I smoke the best tobacco; I fish in chalk streams; I possess Rose Doré at three shillings a tube; I live like a lord whose estate is not too seriously encumbered. And for the first thirty years of my life I did not begin to pay expenses. I have been the death of many thousands of pounds and I have not earned enough, if spread over the whole of my life, to keep me from starving. In a word I am one of the undeserving rich.
Old Bunting is seventy-five. He rises at four in the morning and goes to bed at nine in the evening. Between those hours he rests perhaps for four. He can make hay, he can hedge and ditch, he can plough and sow and reap and mow, and be a farmer's septuagenarian. He has raised a large family of strong admirable citizens. He lives on bread and tea and beer and cabbage and bacon and a little tinned salmon and a little beef. He smokes something called Coolie Cut. The price of my reel is a week's living to Old Bunting.
And he is contented, nay, happy; delights in hedging; mows with gratitude.
Why, in the name of Injustice? Why?
​A long time ago one of the undeserving rich, a person like myself, must have been faced with the same difficulty. Looking upon the ancestor of Old Bunting he must have reflected thus: "In a short time the fellow will notice something and will then proceed to take all my property away from me and hand over to me his in exchange, reserving only for himself that large and exceedingly sharp scythe." Being, unlike myself, a man of extraordinary cleverness, he must have gone to Old Bunting's ancestor, and told him that Industry was the source of Happiness. Old Bunting's ancestor, knowing himself to be excellently industrious, must have been pleased, and never having had time to think for himself, must have accepted the statement on the word of the well-dressed gentleman. Once incorporated with the mental equipment of Old Bunting's ancestor the thing would be handed down through the Bunting generations until it has reached Bunting, our contemporary.
That might account for it.
It is certainly inconceivable that the idea could have originated among the deserving poor.
I have said that I was extremely pleased when I landed my greatest trout.
I am also extremely pleased that I am one of the undeserving rich.
​But I am also sorry that there should be so many deserving poor. (What the deuce is it they deserve?)
And I am also sorry that there should be so many little graylings in the river. But it is so.