several times and gone fishing with an old fisherman who lived there. My
nephew, like most boys, had a desire to become a fisherman or hunter, and my
brother had suspected that a little close acquaintance with the way a
fisherman lived would cure him of this desire; in this he was entirely
right, and after a few trips to visit the old fellow, he had expressed
himself as cured of any desire to live the beautiful, pleasant life of a
river fisherman.

Without going any further, it can easily be seen that a fisherman symbolizes
for me everything that is synonymous with failure. Thus, when I stepped out
into the muddy water and began fishing I symbolically became a failure, a
no-account, a man who had failed in the struggle and had not achieved
success. The very fact that we came DOWN HILL to the place of fishing
shows, on the face of it, that a downhill career is symbolized. My brother
was with me, and that is easily explained as a dramatization of the fact
that I was accompanying him on that downhill road to the state of the man in
the rickety wagon which he had prophesied as his future. The water in the
shallow pools was muddy, and I stepped into it just after experiencing a
fear that I would get my shoes wet. Remembering the fisherman's bare brown
feet, this can be interpreted as nothing but a very strong symbolization of
a drop from a cultured and successful circle to a low and unsuccessful one.
I grasp a fish bigger than myself and struggle with it, but am compelled to
give it up. Another symbol: my work is plainly too big for me; this
question is too much for me to handle, and this thesis will ultimately have
to be given up as the big fish is. In fact, I cannot say that I succeeded in
getting ANY fish out of the water and, therefore, I shall never succeed at
anything I undertake, but will land figuratively, if not actually, in the
fisherman's hut.

The Mr. N. who was with us, was cross-eyed which, in itself, seemed to have