I recollect studying his Complete Angler
several years since in company with a knot of friends in America,
and moreover that we were all completely bitten with the angling
mania. It was early in the year, but as soon as the weather was
auspicious, and that the spring began to melt into the verge of
summer, we took rod in hand and sallied into the country, as
stark mad as was ever Don Quixote from reading books of chivalry.
One of our party had equalled the Don in the fulness of his
equipments, being attired cap-a-pie for the enterprise. He wore a
broad-skirted fustian coat, perplexed with half a hundred
pockets; a pair of stout shoes and leathern gaiters; a basket
slung on one side for fish; a patent rod, a landing net, and a
score of other inconveniences only to be found in the true
angler's armory. Thus harnessed for the field, he was as great a
matter of stare and wonderment among the country folk, who had
never seen a regular angler, as was the steel-clad hero of La
Mancha among the goatherds of the Sierra Morena.
Our first essay was along a mountain brook among the Highlands of
the Hudson--a most unfortunate place for the execution of those
piscatory tactics which had been invented along the velvet
margins of quiet English rivulets.
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