I followed my older brother up to the dam, and sat down in the shade of the overhanging willow-trees, and cast my line over the bank into the deep water, which was surely filled with fish. Perhaps in those days it was not the fish alone, but the idea of fishing. It was the great pond, which seemed so wide and deep, and which spread out like glass before my eyes. It was the big willow-trees that stood in a row just by the water’s edge, with their drooping branches hanging almost to the ground, and casting their cool delicious shade over the short grass where we sat and fished; and then the blue sky above,—the sky which we did not know or understand, or really think about, but somehow felt, with that sense of freedom that always comes with the open sky. Surely, to sit and fish, or to lie under the green trees and look up through their branches at the white clouds chasing each other across the clear blue heavens,—this was real, and a part of the life of the universe, and also the life of the little child. How many castles we built from the changing forms of those ever-hurrying clouds, moving on and ever on until they were lost in the great unknown blue! How many dreams we dreamed, how many visions we saw,—visions of our manhood, our great strength, and the wonderful achievements that would some day resound throughout the world! And those castles and dreams and visions of our youth,—where are they now? What has blasted the glowing promises that were born of our young blood, the free air, and the endless blue heavens above? Well, what matters is whether or not the castles were ever really built? At least the dreams were a part of childhood’s life, as later dreams are a part of maturer years. And, after all, if the dreams had not been dreamed then life had not been lived. But here in the great pond we sometimes caught real fish. True, we waited long and patiently, with our lines hanging listlessly in the stream. True, the fishes were never so large or so many as we hoped to catch, but such as they were we dragged them relentlessly from the pond and strung them on a willow stick with the greatest glee. I remember distinctly the time when some accident befell the dam, and the water was drawn off to make repairs. The great surface of stone and mud for the first time was uncovered to our sight, and I remember the flopping and struggling fishes that found themselves with no water in which to swim. I remember how we pounced upon these fishes, and caught them with our hands, and almost filled a washtub with the poor helpless things. I cannot recall that I thought anything about the fishes, except that it was a fine chance to catch them and take them home; although the emptying of the mill-pond must have been the greatest and most serious catastrophe to them,—not less than comes to a community of men and women from the sinking of a city in the sea. But we had then only seen the world from the point of view of children and not of fishes.