WINTER ANGLING. 287 



" Alas ! what a rent these last words make in the bal- 

 loon I have been inflating ! Logic (another troublesome 

 nuisance, evolved, probably, at Hunter's Point) forces 

 me from the clouds to earth and insists that I shall 

 accept a trite aphorism : ' Little events fill little minds ; 

 great events for big ones.' 



" Then if I take refuge in the cowardly device of say- 

 ing I don't want a big mind, what becomes of my theory 

 of intellectual development as the outgrowth of an 

 eventless life ! 



" I decline to follow out more in detail this or any 

 other line of argument. One can't argue in the face of 

 such an event as the thermometer in the nineties away 

 up here in the mountains. 



" This chance allusion to logic reminds me that I have 

 recently heard from a dear old angling friend. He 

 writes incidentally that since his return to his active pro- 

 fessional duties he has made money enough to pay 

 many times over the expenses of his recent two weeks' 

 fishing bout with me. I have written him that he 

 might find it well to start at once upon another trip. 

 I have no doubt there exists a certain correlation of 

 forces whereby a week's fishing, with its resultant in- 

 crease of oxygenation, and rebuilding of gray tissue, 

 accurately represents a certain amount of possible mental 

 labor and thus, indirectly, a fixed sum of money. 



" It is then alarming to think how abnormally rich a 

 man might become if he fished all the time." 



If I have thus quoted somewhat at length vaporings 



