The lake whither we went was a large and beautiful expanse, girt by a landscape which to my fancy was the embodiment of poetic delicacy and suggestion.  I began to inquire about the chub, dace, and trouts, but my bookseller lost no time in telling me that the lake had been rid of all cheap fry, and had been stocked with game fish, such as bass and pike.

I did not at all relish this covert sneer at traditions which I have always reverenced, and the better acquainted I became with my bookseller’s modern art of angling the less I liked it.  I have little love for that kind of angling which does not admit of a simultaneous enjoyment of the surrounding beauties of nature.  My bookseller enjoined silence upon me, but I did not heed the injunction, for I must, indeed, have been a mere wooden effigy to hold my peace amid that picturesque environment of hill, valley, wood, meadow, and arching sky of clear blue.

It was fortunate for me that I had my ``Noctes Ambrosianae’’ along, for when I had exhausted my praise of the surrounding glories of nature, my bookseller would not converse with me; so I opened my book and read to him that famous passage between Kit North and the Ettrick Shepherd, wherein the shepherd discourses boastfully of his prowess as a piscator of sawmon.

As the sun approached midheaven and its heat became insupportable, I raised my umbrella; to this sensible proceeding my bookseller objected—­in fact, there was hardly any reasonable suggestion I had to make for beguiling the time that my bookseller did not protest against it, and when finally I produced my ``Newcastle Fisher’s Garlands’’ from my basket, and began to troll those spirited lines beginning

     Away wi’ carking care and gloom
      That make life’s pathway weedy O! 
  A cheerful glass makes flowers to bloom
      And lightsome hours fly speedy O!

he gathered in his rod and tackle, and declared that it was no use trying to catch fish while Bedlam ran riot.

As for me, I had a delightful time of it; I caught no fish, to be sure:  but what of that?  I could have caught fish had I so desired, but, as I have already intimated to you and as I have always maintained and always shall, the mere catching of fish is the least of the many enjoyments comprehended in the broad, gracious art of angling.

Even my bookseller was compelled to admit ultimately that I was a worthy disciple of Walton, for when we had returned to the club house and had partaken of our supper I regaled the company with many a cheery tale and merry song which I had gathered from my books.  Indeed, before I returned to the city I was elected an honorary member of the club by acclamation—­not for the number of fish I had expiscated (for I did not catch one), but for that mastery of the science of angling and the literature and the traditions and the religion and the philosophy thereof which, by the grace of the companionship of books, I had achieved.