e 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.

DISCIPULA. Yes, yes; let us go!

PISCATOR. Well, scholar, here we are again, after our long tramp. You see
I am a better land-pilot than you just now took me to be; for I have
brought us out to the right spot; more by token, yonder is the boat, safe
and sound. I