unworldliness and readiness to invest yourself in an enterprise that
does n't pay in the current coin. Not only is the angler, like the
poet, born and not made, as Walton says, but there is a deal of the
poet in him, and he is to be judged no more harshly; he is the victim
of his genius: those wild streams, how they haunt him! he will play
truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of
their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty
years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and step off
with wonderful elasticity toward the beloved streams; it used to try my
young legs a good deal to follow him, specially on the return trip. And
no poet was ever more innocent of worldly success or ambition. For, to
paraphrase Tennyson,--

"Lusty trout to him were scrip and share,
And babbling waters more than cent for cent."

He laid up treasures, but they were not in this world. In fact, though
the kindest of husbands, I fear he was not what the country people call
a "good provider," except in providing trout in their season, though it
is doubtful if there was always fat in the house to fry them in. But he
could tell you they were worse off than that at Valley Forge, and that
trout, or any other fish, were good roasted in the ashes under the
coals. He had the Walton requisite of loving quietness and
contemplation, and was devout withal. Indeed, in many ways he was akin
to those Galilee fishermen who were called to be fishers of men. How he
read the Book and pored over it, even at times, I suspect, nodding over
it, and laying it down only to take up his rod, over which, unless the
trout were very dilatory and the journey very fatiguing, he never
nodded!