"And now, gentlemen," he says, heartily, "let us go in to dinner."...

As I think of it, now that it is written, this story bears no very close
relationship to my original subject, and yet it seemed to follow
naturally enough as I set it down, and to belong with the simple and
well-flavoured things of the garden and fields; and recalling the advice
of Cobbett to his nephew on the art of writing, "never to alter a
thought, for that which has come of itself into your mind is likely to
pass into that of another more readily and with more effect than
anything which you can by reflection invent," I leave it here just as I
wrote it, hoping that the kinship of my genial old friend with simple
and natural and temperate things may plainly appear.



CHAPTER V


PLACES OF RETIREMENT

"Good God, how sweet are all things here!
How beautiful the fields appear!
How cleanly do we feed and lie!
Lord, what good hours do we keep!
How quietly we sleep!"

CHARLES COTTON (a friend of Izaak Walton)


_April 29th_.