But alas! being ignorant
of the language of rivers, I had to content myself with my own
dreams, and the large, speckled frog, that sat beside me, watching
the flow of the river with his big, gold-rimmed eyes.
He was happy enough I was sure. There was a complacent satisfaction
in every line of his fat, mottled body. And as I watched him my
mind very naturally reverted to the "Pickwick Papers," and I repeated
Mrs. Lyon-Hunter's deathless ode, beginning:
Can I see thee panting, dying,
On a log,
Expiring frog!
The big, green frog beside me listened with polite attention, but,
on the whole, seemed strangely unmoved. Remembering the book in
my pocket, I took it out; an old book, with battered leathern
covers, which has passed through many hands since it was first
published, more than two hundred years ago.
Indeed it is a wonderful, a most delightful book, known to the
world as "The Compleat Angler," in which, to be sure, one may read
something of fish and fishing, but more about old Izaac's lovable
self, his sunny streams and shady pools, his buxom milkmaids, and
sequestered inns, and his kindly animadversions upon men and things
in general.
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