He stood before his bookshelves trying to select a volume, rejecting one after another as inapposite.

Browning--Keats, Shelley--they seemed more suited for the hearth than for the roadside.

He did not want anything Scots, for he was of opinion that Spring came more richly in England and that English people had a better notion of it.

He was tempted by the Oxford Anthology, but was deterred by its thickness, for he did not possess the thin-paper edition.

Finally he selected Izaak Walton.