in those spots when I am dead. I think they will be the cause of my death, for they irritate me excessively, and nothing shortens a man's life like constant worry.
The little graylings (as deficient in bowels of compassion as they are in the thyroid department) will not care. They will go on rising and feeding and fooling about, pretending to be large fishes, just as happily, just as stupidly, though I am not there to be maddened by them. They will never give me a thought in my cold grave, where they will have placed me. They have no thoughts.
There is a pool on this river. We call it the Island Pool. It is very deep and I have been frightened by the fishes that I have seen in it. The little graylings are not frightened by them. They have not brains enough to be frightened by anything. Not even by me. They rise eternally in this pool. The water and trees are so arranged that it is impossible to tell from below what manner of fish has caused any given break in the surface. The little graylings know this. They have lived so long in this pool that they have managed to acquire this one piece of knowledge. It moulds their whole existence. Morning, afternoon, and evening (and at night for all I know) they rise and rise in the hope that I shall see them and cast to them. They rise at nothing
