THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 67 



or you will never make a good angler. But what say you now ? 

 there is a trout now, and a good one too, if I can but hold him, 

 and two or three turns more will tire him. Now you see he lies 

 still, and the sleight is to land him : reach me that landing-net : 

 so. Sir, now he is mine own, what say you now ? is not this worth 

 all my labor and your patience ? 



Ven. On my word, Master, this is a gallant trout: what shall 

 we do with him ? 



Pisc. Marry, e'en eat him to supper: we'll go to my Hostess, 

 from whence we came ; she told me, as I was going out of door, 

 that my brother Peter, a good angler and a cheerful companion, 

 had sent word he would lodge there to-night, and bring a friend 

 with him. My Hostess has two beds, and I know you and I may 

 have the best ;* we'll rejoice with my brother Peter and his 

 friend, tell tales, or sing ballads, or make a catch,f or find some 

 harmless sport to content us, and pass away a little time without 

 offence to God or man.:]: 



seen a brother of the rod standing often, learned upon inquiry that the lat- 

 ter eentleman had fished that hold for years without ever having even a 

 nibble. The fly-fisher, led on by hope from one promising spot to another, 

 has less of this tedium than the down angler, whose bait is hidden. — im. 

 Ed. 



* Rather primitive, and would stir the spleen of an English tourist if 

 he found it in an American book; but it is perfectly in keeping with the 

 Complete Angler of Walton. — ^m. Ed. 



t Anglers are generally, and " ought to be, musical," as Markham siys; 

 nor are the pleasant songs few, that are written by those whose poetical 

 temperament leads them to delight in the running stream, the green mea- 

 dow, and the sweet fresh air. — jlm. Ed. 



X Seneca, in his JVatural Questions, iii., 13, says: "There are many 

 things of an amusing character that have come into my mind, incredi- 

 ble and fabulous, as that a man should go a fishing with a pickaxe in- 

 stead of nets and hooks;" but the late Capt. Rickets, of Philadelphia, a 

 highly honorable man, and the best fly-fisher I ever met at a stream side, 

 assured me, that he once saw in Switzerland three men going to take trout, 

 one with a sledge-hammer, another with a crow-bar, the third with a large 

 basket. He followed them to the river, in which the water was low, and 

 watched the operation. The man with the sledge struck hardly on a large 

 atone in the stream; the second, with the crow-bar, instantly turned it 

 over, when the third with the basket seldom failed to pick up one or more 

 trout, that had been stunned with the blow, as the fish seen swimming 

 under the ice are often served bv skaters. — Am. Ed. 



