“What it is to be a fisherman!” Malory said. “To wade out into a great, broad river, and stand there isolated from men, with the water swirling round your knees, and crying ‘Come! come away from the staid and stupid land out to the sea, and exchange the shackles of life for the liberty of death.’ When the voice of the water has become too insistent, I have all but bent my knees and given myself up to the rhythm of the stream. Fishing, like nothing else, begets serenity of spirit. Serenity of spirit,” he repeated, “and turbulence of action—that should make up the sum of man’s life.” He cast his fly and began to murmur some lines over to himself,— “Give me a spirit that on life’s rough sea Loves t’ have his sails filled with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air. There is no danger to a man that knows What life and death is....” “The Elizabethans counted life well lost in an adventurous cause. I believe in their sense of duty, but I believe still more in their sense of adventure. And they share with the French the love of _panache_. Prudence is a hateful virtue. I believe the hatefulness of prudence is the chief cause of the unpopularity of Jews.” He looked apologetically at me to see what I made of his dogmatic excursion. “I wonder whether you want me to go on with my story? You do! Well. Amos Pennistan said to me after a month had passed, ‘I’ve enough of Ruth’s nivvering-novvering.’ “I thought that,” said Malory, “an excellent expression—a moral onomatopœia. Amos continued, ‘I’m going to say to her, “One thing or the other; either you take Leslie Dymock, or you leave him.“’ ‘Grand!’ I said, ‘I like your directness, straight to the point, like a pin to a magnet. After all, over-much subtlety has weakened modern life and modern art alike. And what if she replies that she will leave him?’ “I thought his answer a fine simple one, patriarchal in its pride: ‘There’s many young men besides Leslie Dymock that would be glad to marry my daughter; ’tis not every girl has such a dower of looks as my girl, and a dower of this world’s goods thrown along.’ Flocks and herds, she-goats and he-goats, I suppose he would have said, had he lived in Israel two thousand years ago.