ent angler
and now with God"!)--how I should love to have explored the Yarrow with
him, for he was a man of vast soul, vast learning, and vast wit.

"Would you believe it, my dear Shepherd," said he, "that my piscatory
passions are almost dead within me, and I like now to saunter along the
banks and braes, eying the younkers angling, or to lay me down on some
sunny spot, and with my face up to heaven, watch the slow-changing
clouds!"

THERE was the angling genius with whom I would fain go angling!

"Angling," says our revered St. Izaak, "angling is somewhat like
poetry--men are to be born so."

Doubtless there are poets who are not anglers, but doubtless there
never was an angler who was not also a poet. Christopher North was a
famous fisherman; he began his career as such when he was a child of
three years. With his thread line and bent-pin hook the wee tot set
out to make his first cast in "a wee burnie" he had discovered near his
home. He caught his fish, too, and for the rest of the day he carried
the miserable little specimen about on a plate, exhibiting it
triumphantly. With that first experience began a life which I am fain
to regard as one glorious song in praise of the beauty and the
beneficence of nature.

My bookseller once took me angling with him in a Wisconsin lake which
was the property of a club of anglers to which my friend belonged. As
we were to be absent several days I carried along a box of books, for I
esteem appropriate reading to be a most important adjunct to an angling
expedition. My bookseller had with him enough machinery to stock a
whaling expedition, and I could not help wondering what my old Walton
would think, could he drop down into our company with his modest
equipment of hooks, flies, and gentles.

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 book