Discipula. I am looking at the shadow of the trees in the water; an inverted forest in the lake. Fish a little while alone, and let me look.
Piscator. It has become so late in the day that I have not much hope of taking many now. However, I can but try. This same rod and line have done me good service in this same place, before to-day. Ah, I see a pike! I’ll have him! Look! look how slowly and warily he comes up toward the bait! When he gets within a few feet of it, he will make a dash, and gorge it without stopping to think. Ah, there he goes with it; and here he comes back with it, straight up into the boat. Upon my word, a reasonable fish; he wont weigh short of three pounds.
Discipula. Oh, Mr. Piscator! here’s a new heaven and a new earth beneath us! Waving trees with birds flitting among their branches, and far down below, flying clouds and blue sky. A perfect hemisphere, and we are hanging over it, without any thing to support us! I shouldn’t be surprised, to feel myself this minute tumbling down into it, down to the new heaven! I have been expecting to, for some time past; and what a fall would that be! Do you suppose we should stop when we got there?
Piscator. If we did not, where should we go to?
Discipula. Ah, where!
Piscator. These fish do not seem inclined to bite this morning. Yet there is one larger than that I caught before. I must have him, too. Observe how wistfully he eyes the bait; let the fly skim slowly along the water, just over him; that is the way, Sir, to swallow a hook; and now come up, and slide into the basket, out of sight, and keep your brother company.
Discipula. Mr. Piscator, when you make such a splashing in the water, you ruffle and wrinkle my submarine prospect. Please don’t.
Piscator. I think it will be profitless trying to take any more this forenoon; toward night they will bite again. And what shall we do in the mean time? Usually, when I come out here alone, I go ashore, and rest myself during these hours, amid the fragrant shades of the thick trees, that screen me from the mid-day heat. Would you like to take such a ramble?—or are you inclined to stay here, and gaze into the water?
Discipula. I suppose the picture will keep till we come back. Let us go ashore, and wander around in the woods, and find romantic grottoes, and weave flower-wreaths, and build castles in the air.
Piscator. And half a mile inland, you can see its summit from here, is a hill that commands a vast tract of lake and woodland.