" To all of which the Easterner found no
rebuttal except the, to him, entirely efficient plea that his own
method was good form.
Now, of course, it is very pleasant to do things always accurately,
according to the rules of the game, and if you are out merely for
sport, perhaps it is as well to stick to them. But utility is another
matter. Personally, I do not care at all to kill trout unless by the
fly; but when we need meat and they do not need flies, I never hesitate
to offer them any kind of doodle-bug they may fancy. I have even at a
pinch clubbed them to death in a shallow, land-locked pool. Time will
come in your open-water canoe experience when you will pull into
shelter half full of water, when you will be glad of the fortuity of a
chance cross-wave to help you out, when sheer blind luck, or main
strength and awkwardness, will be the only reasons you can honestly
give for an arrival, and a battered and dishevelled arrival at that. Do
not, therefore, repine, or bewail your awkwardness, or indulge in undue
self-accusations of "tenderfoot." Method is nothing; the arrival is the
important thing. You are travelling, and if you can make time by nearly
swamping yourself, or by dragging your craft across a point, or by
taking any other base advantage of the game's formality, by all means
do so. Deuce used to solve the problem of comfort by drinking the
little pool of cold water in which he sometimes was forced to lie.
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