"WHE-E-EW," they said, "WHE-E-EW! PSHA-A-AW!" blowing out
their breath in long, soft sighs as they rolled about like huge
snowballs in the black water. But what did H. E. G---- say? He sat
him quietly down upon a rock and reeled in the remnant of his line,
uttering these remarkable and Christian words: "Those porpoises,"
said he, "describe the situation rather mildly. But it was good fun
while it lasted."
Again I remembered a saying of Walton: "Well, Scholar, you must
endure worse luck sometimes, or you will never make a good angler."
Or a good man, either, I am sure. For he who knows only how to
enjoy, and not to endure, is ill-fitted to go down the stream of
life through such a world as this.
I would not have you to suppose, gentle reader, that in discoursing
of fisherman's luck I have in mind only those things which may be
taken with a hook. It is a parable of human experience. I have
been thinking, for instance, of Walton's life as well as of his
angling: of the losses and sufferings that he, the firm Royalist,
endured when the Commonwealth men came marching into London town; of
the consoling days that were granted to him, in troublous times, on
the banks of the Lea and the Dove and the New River, and the good
friends that he made there, with whom he took sweet counsel in
adversity; of the little children who played in his house for a few
years, and then were called away into the silent land where he could
hear their voices no longer.
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