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"Any?" "Some!"

TROUT FISHING

I wonder if this was taciturnity in the true sense of the word? Certainly the conversation tells the whole story. Each knew the ruling passion of the other and so details were wholly unnecessary and superfluous. No, it was not taciturnity but to them the fullest of verbal expression on the subject.

Our civilization makes heavy demands upon us. We must be ever on the alert would we be numbered among those who are called successes. The age is swift and to the speediest belongs the palm of victory. If you would not be run down move, and that quickly, or clear the way. This seems to be the spirit that actuates us and we pay the toll in frayed nerves and utter mental weariness. The cure? Easy, take a little time off now and then and go trout fishing. Simple, is it not, yet but few take it seriously. There can be no rest more restful than a day beside a good trout stream and the man who takes this treatment returns to his task refreshed in mind and body. Trout fishing develops contemplativeness? Thank fortune that this is true for of a surety we need this in our feverish scramble known as the "higher civilization."

Some of the more simple facts underlying the art of angling? Well, it is a dangerous thing to attempt and at best is but the expressions of one's personal experience, yet human knowledge whatever heights it may have attained, is but the sum of the experience of individuals. A writer in a recent magazine gives the following as rules for the angler: "and here be my three rules for bringin' trout inter an empty creel. Fish where trout lie, never fishin' empty water, 'cause there ain't trout in empty water! Thats the first rule. The second is to never go near where ye thinks trout be without movin' as gingerly as ef ye was passin' in ter view the corpus at a house funeral! th' third rule is ter drop yer fly so it seems as ef it hated ter git wet, and ef a trout didn't grab on, as ef it would nat'ally take inter th' air ag'in. That's all my rules." Well, the rules are good so far as they go. It takes study and experience, almost the development of another sense to determine whether it is "empty water"

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into which we are casting our lures. But this sense comes with experience and then we wonder at the simplicity of the thing.

The approach to the stream must be quiet and the angler should come from the shady side of the stream or at least in such a way that no shadow will be thrown upon the water. This of course, is the ideal to be striven after. Quiet and above all else quiet. Walton remarks, "advise anglers to be patient, and forbear swearing, lest they be heard and catch no fish."

The third rule, lightness in placing the lure is essential to success and adeptness in it can be acquired by practice only. The practice is good for it develops patience and "patience is a good herb."

Our California Coast Range streams are difficult to fish by casting. Brush and alders usually line the banks of the streams and a net-work of boughs and branches overhang the water, rendering casting well nigh impossible. In cases such as this, floating the fly with, the current has to be resorted to. In the early season, fishing with the fly is not generally a success-the trout will not rise from the deep and often discolored water. In this case deep fishing with sinker and bait must be resorted to. Of course I know that the mention of bait is to some anglers very like shaking a red rag in front of a bull, yet I contend, basing the condition on a number of years practice of the art of angling in these streams, that bait fishing does not infringe on the ethics of angling.

Provide yourself with a light rod of about nine feet in length. Equip it with a good reel. Provide yourself with about seventy-five feet of braided silk line of a grey-green color. A fly book with some red-bodied grey hackle, brown hackle, winged ant, blue bottle and white moth flies in its make-up; several three foot, two-loop leaders; several six foot, threeloop leaders; a tube of split shot to be used as sinkers; a creel and bait box; a couple of dozen plain snell hooks number 10 and 12; two or three double-O, redshanked spinners with copper and silver faces and then your angler's license, a little free time and a railroad ticket that assures you transportation to the stream (Continued on Page 537.)

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White Horses and Royalty

Court of St. James Violates Ancient Custom.

By Cedric Wedderburn

HE substitution of six black steeds for white in the royal procession, at the opening of the English Parliament, has set tongues wagging in Great Britain.

The interesting fact has been brought to general notice that the use of white horses has been a habit of royalty from the remote ages. Because ancient kings and barbaric chieftains preferred white horses for their public appearances, the multitude ascribed sacred attributes to such animals. Of course the white steeds were selected chiefly for their effectiveness in centering attention on their riders or drivers, but heathen priesthoods had taken advantage of the popular reverence. White horses were sacrificed to their gods, as were white elephants, bulls and white asses.

The ancient Persians regarded white horses with a special reverence, and some of these animals always accompanied an army on the march. When Xerxes assembled a great host, 480 B. C., and bridged the Hellespont to invade Greece, a splendid golden car to Zeus, drawn by eight white horses, was part of his paraphernalia. The charioteer of this sacred car, went on foot for no mortal must mount it. In the van of the mighty army, the Car of Zeus, was one of the most conspicuous objects, not second to that of the Persian ruler himself surrounded by his royal guard.

Xerses sacrificed white horses to the river gods of the streams that his army crossed on its march of invasion. In In spite of all these ceremonies the Greeks under Leonidas checked the powerful ruler at Thermopylae, and his great fleet was destroyed at Salamis the decisive battle of Europe against Asia, to which Byron has referred in the famous lines: A king sat on the rocky brow,

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;

And ships by thousands lay below,

And men in nations-all were his. He counted them at break of dayAnd when the sun set, where were they?

The Greeks themselves, set great store by white horses. According to a legend of ancient Greece, Rhesus the Thracian chieftain went to the relief of beleagured Troy in a chariot drawn by white horses, but on the night of his arrival before the doomed city, was attacked and slain by Ulysses and Diomed. It has been prophesied that if the Thracian chief fed his white horses on Trojan fodder, or watered them at the River Zanthus before Troy, he could not be overthrown.

Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, who defeated the Carthagenians, 396 B. C., and possessed more power than any Greek prior to Alexander the Great, was accustomed to drive in a chariot, drawn by four white horses of the famed Illyrian breed. He posed as something more than a mortal ruler, though he gained his power by usurpation when the Syracusans, appointed him chief general to resist the Carthagenians.

The Chinese regarded white horses with reverence. Under the Mongol dynasty of Jenghiz Khan, each emperor maintained a great stud of such animals. Jenghiz Khan, who was the greatest conqueror the world has seen, rode a white horse at the head of his triumphant Mongolian hordes through Asia and into Europe in 1221, when he proclaimed the Mongolian empire.

The royal Mongolian stud of white horses maintained by Kubla Khan, the grandson of the great Mongolian conqueror, were pure white without a speck. They were held sacred, and the milk of the mares was drank only by the Khan and his family, and by one clan to which Jenghiz Khan had granted the privilege.

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T

OVERLAND MONTHLY

Confidence An Asset

By Joseph Loeb

WO million, four hundred and fifty six dollars, was saved for the people of San Francisco by the Better Business Bureau of the San Francisco Advertising Club," was the starline statement made by Elliot M. Epsteen, in his speech delivered on May 25th last, before the assembled delegates of the Pacific Coast Advertising Clubs, in convention at Stockton.

"An auditing committee has gone carefully over every case investigated," said Mr. Epsteen, who is attorney for the Bureau, Deputy District Attorney in San Francisco and also prosecuting attorney for the San Francisco Motor Dealers Association. "This committee has put an estimate, based upon facts, on the amount the bureau has saved San Francisco busi

ness men during the past eighteen months. This estimate is extremely conservative; it could be put much higher. The amount saved totals $2,456,100.00.

"About eight years ago, the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, in convention assembled, found upon analytical investigation, that 60% of the Advertising appearing in the various mediums was

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brings the buyer to the business, and the merchandising he encounters when he arthe merchandising fair, a good reputation rives. If the advertising be truthful and has been established, and a customer created who will return again and again.

Instances were then given by Mr. Epsteen, of the work of the San Francisco Advertising Club, how a very conservative estimate of the amount actually saved the community in the last 18 months amounts to two and a half millions of dollars; how the suit clubs were driven out, how the main streets are kept free of fake sales; how special editions of no advertising value are prevented from operating; and Mr. Epsteen proved that the community is being rendered a service of $200 for every dollar paid in to the San Francisco Advertising Club, in actual results achieved.

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"Preventative Fraud," continued Mr. Epsteen, "is the keynote of our deavor. We are putting into business that theory which has given medicine its high standing. We are endeavoring to prevent the fraud before it is perpetrated, committed the fraud. rather than punish a faker after he has

not believed. And when it is considered Effective Unity of Action

that business finds it profitable to spend $6000 to $8000 for a single page, the waste is appalling.

"Out of the investigation which developed, grew the Better Business Movement, a nation wide work for the specific purpose of creating confidence, and securing maximum results from advertising, by making advertising trustworthy.

"Five years of Better Business work has demonstrated that we can do for legitimate business, what legitimate business cannot do for itself, to protect it against the concern who attempts to destroy the good will of business.

"Truth in Advertising" may be termed a practical ideal. It pays in the cash drawer. The value of advertising in any medium rises or falls in accordance with the belief on the part of its readers in the advertisements it publishes.

"The reputation of any house is established almost entirely from two contacts with the public-the advertising which

HE Overland Monthly is in receipt

Tof some admirably illustrated pub

lications, issued by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is trying to bring about effective unity of action, in all larger community matters.

For months past San Francisco business has been urged by the Chamber of Commerce, to devote some of its thought to the work of selling San Francisco to the world. There has been a generous response to this appeal, declares W. H. Levings, Director of Publicity, and the Chamber of Commerce, itself, is striving to do the things which it is urging others to do. That is the explanation of the admirable publications that are being issued. It is hoped that the publications will furnish inspiration upon the points of how business men may, independently, and in various ways set forth the interests of their city. Having created a general and live interest in the subject of com

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