first pipe, he considered what it should be. Poetry, clearly, for
it was the Spring, and besides poetry could be got in pleasantly
small bulk. He stood before his bookshelves trying to select a
volume, rejecting one after another as inapposite. Browning--Keats,
Shelley--they seemed more suited for the hearth than for the
roadside. He did not want anything Scots, for he was of opinion
that Spring came more richly in England and that English people had
a better notion of it. He was tempted by the Oxford Anthology,
but was deterred by its thickness, for he did not possess the
thin-paper edition. Finally he selected Izaak Walton. He had never
fished in his life, but The Compleat Angler seemed to fit his mood.
It was old and curious and learned and fragrant with the youth
of things. He remembered its falling cadences, its country songs and
wise meditations. Decidedly it was the right scrip for his pilgrimage.

Characteristically he thought last of where he was to go. Every bit
of the world beyond his front door had its charms to the seeing eye.
There seemed nothing common or unclean that fresh morning. Even a
walk among coal-pits had its attractions....But since he had the
right to choose, he lingered over it like an epicure. Not the
Highlands, for Spring came late among their sour mosses. Some place
where there were fields and woods and inns, somewhere, too, within
call of the sea. It must not be too remote, for he had no time to waste
on train journeys; nor too near, for he wanted a countryside untainted.
Presently he thought of Carrick. A good green land, as he remembered
it, with purposeful white roads and public-houses sacred to the memory
of Burns; near the hills but yet lowland, and with a bright sea
chafing on its shores. He decided on Carrick, found a map, and
planned his journey.