A make-believe hunt that now bears the name of sport. Yes, but not always.
Here is one with a red, battered face and a curiously practical air about
him. He is putting his fish in a basket and counting them. Two dozen
perch.

"Want to sell them?"

He shakes his head.

"What are you going to do with them?"

He looks up and grins slowly. Then he points to his lips with his fingers
and makes signs. This means he is dumb. He places his hand over his
stomach and grins again. He is going to eat them. It is time to go home
and do this, so he puts up his fishpole and packs his primitive
paraphernalia--a tin can, a rusty spike, a bamboo pole.

Here is one, then, who, in the heart of the steel forest called
civilization, still seeks out long forgotten ways of keeping life in his
body. He hunts for fish.

The sun slides down the sky. The fishermen begin to pack up. They walk
with their heads down and bent forward like number 7s. They raise their
eyes occasionally to the piles of stone and steel that mark the city
front. Back to their troubles and their cinder patch, but--and this is a
curious fact--their eyes gleam with hope and curiosity.