The Compleat ^Angler 



and that my haste, perhaps, is not so great but it might dispense with 

 such a divertisement as I promise myself in your company, yet I 

 cannot, in modesty, accept your offer, and must therefore beg your 

 pardon : I could otherwise, I confess, be glad to wait upon you, if 

 upon no other account but to talk of Mr. I. Walton, and to receive 

 those instructions you say you are able to give me for the deceiving 

 a trout ; in which art I will not deny but that I have an ambition to 

 be one of the greatest deceivers ; though I cannot forbear freely to 

 tell you, that I think it hard to say much more than has been read 

 to me upon that subject. 



Pise. Well, sir, I grant that too ; but you must know that the 

 variety of rivers require different ways of angling : however, you 

 shall have the best rules I am able to give, and I will tell you nothing 

 I have not made myself as certain of as any man can be in a thirty 

 years' experience (for so long I have been a dabbler in that art) ; and 

 that, if you please to stay a few days, you shall, in a very great 

 measure, see made good to you. But of that hereafter ; and now, 

 sir, if I am not mistaken, I have half overcome you ; and that I may 

 wholly conquer that modesty of yours, I will take upon me to be so 

 familiar as to say, you must accept my invitation, which, that you 

 may the more easily be persuaded to do, I will tell you that my 

 house stands upon the margin of one of the finest rivers for trouts 

 and grayling in England ; that I have lately built a little fishing- 

 house upon it, dedicated to anglers, over the door of which you will 

 see the two first letters of my father Walton's name and mine twisted 

 in cipher ; that you shall lie in the same bed he has sometimes been 

 contented with, and have such country entertainment as my friends 

 sometimes accept, and be as welcome, too, as the best friend of them 

 all. 



VIAT. No doubt, sir, but my master Walton found good reason 

 to be satisfied with his entertainment in your house ; for you who 

 are so friendly to a mere stranger, who deserves so little, must needs 

 be exceeding kind and free to him who deserves so much. 



Pise. Believe me, no : and such as are intimately acquainted 

 with that gentleman know him to be a man who will not endure 

 to be treated like a stranger. So that his acceptation of my poor 



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