THE EMPTY CREEL 193 



I think I hit at the heart of the matter in the 

 first incident narrated. It is the correspond- 

 ence of the soul of a man with his environment 

 that makes angling worth while. When the 

 catching of many fish causes us to forget our 

 surroundings, blinds our eyes to the beauties of 

 Nature and deadens our ears to the Music of the 

 Wild, we cease to be true anglers. There is a 

 sense in which a large catch is a catastrophe. If 

 a man cannot fill his creel without emptying his 

 heart, then a thousand times an empty creel. 



I have been absolutely and resolutely honest in 

 this chapter. To-day, as I look back over the 

 days that have been and, with their memories as 

 constructive material, dream of the days to be, 

 I see hanging before me full creels and creels 

 guiltless of fish. To choose between the two I 

 cannot. I turn not away from the former's gap- 

 ing emptiness nor the latter's cover-crowding 

 fulness. We need both, you and I, in order that 

 we may be true anglers. "In life be a fisher- 



man." 



