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Side 20 av 112
Nothing is more foolish in sport than the habit of precipitation.
And yet it is a fault to which I am singularly subject. As a boy,
in Brooklyn, I never came in sight of the Capitoline Skating Pond,
after a long ride in the horse-cars, without breaking into a run
along the board walk, buckling on my skates in a furious hurry, and
flinging myself impetuously upon the ice, as if I feared that it
would melt away before I could reach it. Now this, I confess, is a
grievous defect, which advancing years have not entirely cured; and
I found it necessary to take myself firmly, as it were, by the
mental coat-collar, and resolve not to spoil the chance of catching
the only ouananiche in the Unpronounceable River by undue haste in
fishing for him.
I carefully tested a brand-new leader, and attached it to the line
with great deliberation and the proper knot. Then I gave my whole
mind to the important question of a wise selection of flies.
It is astonishing how much time and mental anxiety a man can spend
on an apparently simple question like this. When you are buying
flies in a shop it seems as if you never had half enough. You keep
on picking out a half-dozen of each new variety as fast as the
enticing salesman shows them to you. You stroll through the streets
of Montreal or Quebec and drop in at every fishing-tackle dealer's
to see whether you can find a few more good flies. Then, when you
come to look over your collection at the critical moment on the bank
of a stream, it seems as if you had ten times too many. And, spite
of all, the precise fly that you need is not there.
You select a couple that you think fairly good, lay them down beside
you in the grass, and go on looking through the book for something
better. Failing to satisfy yourself, you turn to pick up those that
you have laid out, and find that they have mysteriously vanished
from the face of the earth.
Then you struggle with naughty words and relapse into a condition of
mental palsy.
Precipitation is a fault. But deliberation, for a person of
precipitate disposition, is a vice.
The best thing to do in such a case is to adopt some abstract theory
of action without delay, and put it into practice without
hesitation. Then if you fail, you can throw the responsibility on
the theory.
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