I
hooked myself instead of the fish, tangled my line in every tree,
lost my bait, broke my rod, until I gave up the attempt in
despair, and passed the day under the trees reading old Izaak,
satisfied that it was his fascinating vein of honest simplicity
and rural feeling that had bewitched me, and not the passion for
angling. My companions, however, were more persevering in their
delusion. I have them at this moment before eyes, stealing along
the border of the brook where it lay open to the day or was
merely fringed by shrubs and bushes. I see the bittern rising
with hollow scream as they break in upon his rarely-invaded
haunt; the kingfisher watching them suspiciously from his dry
tree that overhangs the deep black millpond in the gorge of the
hills; the tortoise letting himself slip sideways from off the
stone or log on which he is sunning himself; and the panic-struck
frog plumping in headlong as they approach, and spreading an
alarm throughout the watery world around.
I recollect also that, after toiling and watching and creeping
about for the greater part of a day, with scarcely any success in
spite of all our admirable apparatus, a lubberly country urchin
came down from the hills with a rod made from a branch of a tree,
a few yards of twine, and, as Heaven shall help me! I believe a
crooked pin for a hook, baited with a vile earthworm, and in half
an hour caught more fish than we had nibbles throughout the day!
But, above all, I recollect the "good, honest, wholesome, hungry"
repast which we made under a beech tree just by a spring of pure
sweet water that stole out of the side of a hill, and how, when
it was over, one of the party read old Izaak Walton's scene with
the milkmaid, while I lay on the grass and built castles in a
bright pile of clouds until I fell asleep.
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