Explore "Fishing in Books" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"SIMPSON. -- Have you ever seen any American books on angling, / Fisher? " / "FISHER. -- No, I do not think there are any published. / Brother Jonathan is not yet sufficiently civilized to / produce anything original on the gentle art. There is good / trout-fishing in America, and the streams, which are all / free, are much less fished than in our Island, 'from the / small number of gentlemen,' as an American writer says, 'who / are at leisure to give their time to it. " / -- WILLIAM ANDREW CHATTO: The Angler's Souvenir (London, / 1835).
That wise man and accomplished scholar, Sir Henry Wotton, the friend of / Izaak Walton and ambassador of King James I to the republic of Venice, / was accustomed to say that "he would rather live five May months than / forty Decembers. " The reason for this preference was no secret to those / who knew him. It had nothing to do with British or Venetian politics. It / was simply because December, with all its domestic joys, is practically / a dead month in the angler's calendar.