Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter VII I go a-Fishing WAS I disappointed that there was no strawberry mark ? Frankly, I was not. The discovery of the strawberry mark would have meant the end of my Quest; and few publishers will take a book of five thousand words. No ; I was not downcast; I sang a song, extempore, as I made my way to the inn after the ball. Having snuffed the candle with the silver snuffers, and lit my pipe (for even poets smoke in bed), I said to myself, "Courage, Matthias, courage" (though my name is not Matthias), and fell a-thynking, like Piscator in my edition of old Izaak's immortal volume. Little did the contemplative old man dream, as he sat in the osier-beds beside his beloved Dove, that his book would live to be edited by me. This posthumous glory is a strange thing—erratic, unsatisfying, sad. I wonder if Izaak ever caught a fish in his life. I wonder, and I have my doubts. Though I edited the " Compleat Angler," I never had a fishing-rod in my hand. Anybody, I am advised by the Field, can gather as much who reads the book in which I talk of a three- pound trout being flashed through the air at the end of several feet of gossamer gut. I fancy Don John Quixote Buchan of Oxford and the Moors inspired the Field. He is a prominent member of the Fish School of Literature, and would resent the superior romantic touch of a neophyte, as-it were. Ah well, ah well ! Good-night, good-night. . . . " So here has been dawning Another blue day ; Say shall we let it pass Useless away?" Carlyle wrote that. I used to think it was Watts. One never knows. Had Watts lived nowadays he would have been in great danger of the Laureateship. Eight o'clock. I open the lattice-window. The scent of lavender is in the air ! Lavender ! The old house at Myrtle-cum-Redgates comes into my mind. It...