Ah, Yseult! hadst thou but been a book!

VII

THE DELIGHTS OF FENDER-FISHING

I should like to have met Izaak Walton.  He is one of the few authors whom I know I should like to have met.  For he was a wise man, and he had understanding.  I should like to have gone angling with him, for I doubt not that like myself he was more of an angler theoretically than practically.  My bookseller is a famous fisherman, as, indeed, booksellers generally are, since the methods employed by fishermen to deceive and to catch their finny prey are very similar to those employed by booksellers to attract and to entrap buyers.

As for myself, I regard angling as one of the best of avocations, and although I have pursued it but little, I concede that doubtless had I practised it oftener I should have been a better man.  How truly has Dame Juliana Berners said that ``at the least the angler hath his wholesome walk and merry at his ease, and a sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead flowers that maketh him hungry; he heareth the melodious harmony of fowls; he seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, cotes, and many other fowls with their broods, which meseemeth better than all the noise of hounds, the blasts of horns, and the cry of fowls that hunters, falconers, and fowlers can make.  And if the angler take fish—­surely then is there no man merrier than he is in his spirit!’’

My bookseller cannot understand how it is that, being so enthusiastic a fisherman theoretically, I should at the same time indulge so seldom in the practice of fishing, as if, forsooth, a man should be expected to engage continually and actively in every art and practice of which he may happen to approve.  My young friend Edward Ayer has a noble collection of books relating to the history of American aboriginals and to the wars waged between those Indians and the settlers in this country; my other young friend Luther Mills has gathered together a multitude of books treating of the Napoleonic wars; yet neither Ayer nor Mills hath ever slain a man or fought a battle, albeit both find delectation in recitals of warlike prowess and personal valor.  I love the night and all the poetic influences of that quiet time, but I do not sit up all night in order to hear the nightingale or to contemplate the astounding glories of the heavens.

For similar reasons, much as I appreciate and marvel at the beauties of early morning, I do not make a practice of early rising, and sensible as I am to the charms of the babbling brook and of the crystal lake, I am not addicted to the practice of wading about in either to the danger either to my own health or to the health of the finny denizens in those places.