VENEZUELAN FISHERMAN

Image from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/…/…/james-weldon-johnson.jpg. "Now fishing, it may be said, is the laziest of all the sports; here was a fisherman without a rod or line or hook, who was puffing languidly on his cigarette while the fish jumped into his boat. His only effort in the meantime was to observe his catch occasionally to see if it was sufficient.... "At any rate, this is the inside of the story: The fisherman, just before the tide turned to run out, paddled his boat to the inlet and anchored it across the mouth, which was hardly wider than the length of his craft; then a yard or so on the upstream side of his boat, he stretched a seine entirely across the inlet with about a foot of the net above the water. He then sat in his boat and smoked while he waited. At the turn of the tide, the fish that had been chasing their prey up the bay and into the inlet, started back to the sea, and found their passage obstructed by the seine; at least a fair number of them simply backed up and took a flying leap over the barrier; some fell short of the boat and others shot over it, but enough fell in to reward the fisherman for his ingenuity and patience. We watched until the satisfied fisherman removed his seine, pulled his anchors, and paddled away; and we agreed that laziness, not necessity, is the mother of invention." P.235, ALONG THIS WAY, by James Weldon Johnson (1933)