But all
their learning is forgotten, their cares and controversies are laid
aside, in "innocuous desuetude." The Summer School of Sociology is
assembled. The Medical Congress is in session.
But they care not--no, not so much as the value of a single live
bait. The sun shines upon them with a fervent heat, but it irks
them not. The rain descends, and the winds blow and beat upon them,
but they are unmoved. They are securely anchored here in the lee of
Sabbath-Day Point.
What enchantment binds them to that inconsiderable spot? What magic
fixes their eyes upon the point of a fishing-rod, as if it were the
finger of destiny? It is the enchantment of uncertainty: the same
natural magic that draws the little suburban boys in the spring of
the year, with their strings and pin-hooks, around the shallow ponds
where dace and redfins hide; the same irresistible charm that fixes
a row of city gamins, like ragged and disreputable fish-crows, on
the end of a pier where blear-eyed flounders sometimes lurk in the
muddy water. Let the philosopher explain it as he will. Let the
moralist reprehend it as he chooses. There is nothing that attracts
human nature more powerfully than the sport of tempting the unknown
with a fishing-line.
Those ancient anglers have set out upon an exodus from the tedious
realm of the definite, the fixed, the must-certainly-come-to-pass.
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