INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 2$ 



"It is said that many an unlucky urchin is induced to run 

 away from his family, and betake himself to a seafaring life, 

 from reading the history of Robinson Crusoe ; and I suspect 

 that, in like manner, many of those worthy gentlemen, who 

 are given to haunt the sides of pastoral streams with angle-rods 

 in hand, may trace the origin of their passion to the seductive 

 pages of honest Izaak Walton. I recollect studying his * Com- 

 plete 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 be- 

 gan 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 Sierra Morena. 



" Our first essay was along a mountain brook among the high- 

 lands of the Hudson : a most unfortunate place for the execu- 

 tion of those piscatory tactics which had been invented along 

 the velvet margins of quiet English rivulets. . . . 



" For my part, I was always a bungler at all kinds of sport 

 that required either patience or adroitness, and had not angled 

 above half an hour before I had completely ' satisfied the senti- 

 ment,' and convinced myself of the truth of Izaak Walton's 

 opinion, that angling is something like poetry, a man must 

 be born to it. I hooked myself instead of the fish ; tangled my 

 line in every tree ; lost my bait ; broke my rod ; until I gave up 



