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Editorial 

 Isaak Walton 



Through the dust of changing centuries, there has trickled down 

 to us of the present day a brook of purest water, — sometimes 

 meandering and doubling upon itself in level green meadows and 

 sometimes dashing over rocks and plunging over falls. From this 

 brook many a soul has quaffed a refreshing drink and has paused to 

 watch the graceful creatures that lived within its depths and has 

 listened to the throstle singing above it. It is a stream that has 

 gained as the years passed on and has lost none of its waters or its 

 freshness. It is the stream on whose banks wandered the man 

 whom we lovingly call "Old Isaak Walton," — old because he is 

 eternally young and always a happy and charming companion. 



That the opportunity for thought and close companionship with 

 nature were among the chief attractions that angling possessed for 

 Isaak Walton no reader of the " Compleat Angler" can doubt. He 

 says : "It remains yet unresolved whether the happiness of a man 

 in this world doth consist more in contemplation or action. Con- 

 cerning which two opinions I shall forbear to add a third by 

 declaring my own, and rest myself contented in telling you, that 

 both these meet together, and do most properly belong to the most 

 honest, ingenious, quiet, and harmless art of angling. And first 

 I tell you what some have observed, and I have found to be a real 

 truth, that the very sitting by the riverside is not only the quietest 

 and fittest place of contemplation, but will invite an angler to it." 

 Isaak Walton was born in 1593 and died in 1683. If we glance 

 over the history of England covered by the period of his life, we 

 find it began during the last years of Elizabeth's reign and ended 



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