“Don’t all boys and girls have fishing holes?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“In the cities, of course not. It’s too bad.”
For a time after that they were silent. It was Florence who broke the Sabbath-like stillness of the old fishing hole.
“People,” she mused, “are very much like fishing holes. You have a friend. You are with him a great deal. He tells you all he can about himself. He turns the light of truth upon himself and allows you to gaze into the very depths of his soul. At last you say, ‘There is no mystery left in his being. I know it all.’ Then of a sudden, in time of joyous tempest, splendid success or dark storm of disappointment and sorrow, in a moment demanding heroic courage, he shows you in an instant that there are possibilities in his being of which you never dreamed.
“Cities are like that, too,” she went on. “Take the great city I call home. It’s a very plain city where millions toil for their daily bread. I’ve been all over it. I often say to myself, ‘There is no further mystery in this city.’ I have no more than said it than I come upon a Chinatown, a theatre, a court room, some dark place at night where such persons meet as I have never known. Then that old city seems to look up and laugh as it exclaims, ‘No mystery!’”
“It must be wonderful to explore such a city!” Tillie’s words were filled with longing.
“Perhaps,” replied Florence, “we can do it together some time.”
A large perch took Florence’s minnow. She reeled him in and threw him in the live-net.
“Probably all I’ll get,” she commented, “but they are fine fried brown in butter.”