"The Double Alibi"
was in _Longman's Magazine_. The author has to thank the Editors and
Publishers for permission to reprint these papers.
The gem engraved on the cover is enlarged from a small intaglio in the
collection of Mr. M. H. N. STORY-MASKELYNE, M.P. Such gems were
recommended by Clemens of Alexandria to the early Christians. "The
figure of a man fishing will put them in mind of the Apostle." Perhaps
the Greek is using the red hackle described by AElian in the only known
Greek reference to fly-fishing.
NOTE TO NEW EDITION
The historical version of the Black Officer's career, very unlike the
legend in "Loch Awe," may be read in Mr. Macpherson's _Social Life in the
Highlands_.
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER
These papers do not boast of great sport. They are truthful, not like
the tales some fishers tell. They should appeal to many sympathies.
There is no false modesty in the confidence with which I esteem myself a
duffer, at fishing. Some men are born duffers; others, unlike persons of
genius, become so by an infinite capacity for not taking pains. Others,
again, among whom I would rank myself, combine both these elements of
incompetence. Nature, that made me enthusiastically fond of fishing,
gave me thumbs for fingers, short-sighted eyes, indolence, carelessness,
and a temper which (usually sweet and angelic) is goaded to madness by
the laws of matter and of gravitation.
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