"Oh, so, so," answers one of the fishermen and points mutely to a string
of several dozen perch floating under his feet in the water.

Thus does man, by virtue of his faith, rise above the science of
mathematics and the barriers of logic. Thus is his fantastic belief in
things unseen and easily disproved vindicated. He catches fish where by
the law of probabilities there should be no fish. With the whole lake
stretching mockingly before him he sits consumed with a preposterous, a
fanatical faith in the little half-inch minnow dangling at the end of his
line.

The hours pass. The sun grows hotter. The piles of stone and steel along
the lake front seem to waver. From the distant streets come faint noises.
On a hot day the city is as appealing as a half-cooled cinder patch. Poor
devils in factories, poor devils in stores, in offices. One must sigh
thinking of them. Life is even vaster than the lake in which these
fishermen fish. And happiness is mathematically elusive as the fish for
which the fishermen wait. And yet--

An old man with a battered face. A young man with a battered face. Silent,
stoical, battered-looking men with fishpoles. A hundred, two hundred, they
sit staring into the water of the lake as if they were looking for
something. For fish? Incredible. One does not sit like this watching for
something to become visible. Why? Because then there would be an air of
suspense about the watcher. He would grow nervous after an hour, when the
thing remained still invisible, and finally he would fall into hysterics
and unquestionably shriek.

And these men grow calmer. Then what are they looking at, hour after hour,
under the hot sun? Nothing. They are letting the rhythm of water and sky