who wears the decayed sailor hat with a sprig of heather in it. "Yu don' mean to say you've a-catched all these yer lovely fish!" she exclaimed, in the hope of driving us down to tenpence. "'Levenpence the dozen, Jemina." "Aw well, then yu must let I pay 'ee when I sold 'em." With a mackerel stuck by the gills on the tip of each finger, I came in house. The children had had their broth, and were being got ready for school. "Mam! Fish!" "Mam! I wants some fish. Mam 'Idger..." "Yu shall hae some fish another time." "Well, jam side the plaate then." Jimmy's finger was in the jam-pot. "Yu daring rascal!" shrieked Mam 'Idger. "Get 'long to schule with 'ee. Yu'll be laate, an' I shall hae the 'spector round. Get 'long now an' see what I'll hae for 'ee when yu come back." "Coo'h! Bulls'-eyes! Ay, Mam? Gude-bye, Mam. Bye, Dad. Bye, all." A tramp of feet went out through the passage. Mrs. Widger shovelled the crisp mackerel from the frying-pan to our plates. Tony soused his with vinegar from a whisky-bottle. We lingered over our tea till he said, "Must go out an' clean they there boats, an' take out the popples what they confounded childern chucks in, little thinking us got to pick every one on 'em out be hand. Ay me! our work be never done. . . ." "No more ain't mine," Mrs. Widger retorted. Then our breakfast party broke up; Tony to his boats, and Mam 'Idger to scrub at her steaming wash-tub and to cook dinner in snatched moments. IV. "Us got 'em at last, then!" so we tell one another. We have caught the catch of the season. The For three or four days the hauls had been fairly good. Elsewhere on the coast the snow, sleet, wind and wrecks continued. Here alone, in Seacombe Bay, it got colder and colder, and the sea became calmer and sunnier. spray from the springs in the cliffs froze. ""Tis like old days," Uncle Jake said, while he spliced a new cutrope to the drifter. "The herring be come again in bodies, and the price be up. Us'll hae 'em." An hour before sunset we were shoved off the beach-Tony skipper, John mate, and myself extra man. Every article of underclothing in duplicate, a couple of guernseys and a coat or two, were next to nakedness. We were bloated with clothes, but that northerly air, it seemed to be fingering our very skins. Yet there was hardly wind enough to fill the sail. Rickety-rock, rickety-rock went the sweeps between the thole-pins as we rowed to the fishing ground six miles or so away. Not one of us wished to shirk the heavy work. 'Twas our only source of warmth. The sun was setting. The moon began to rise. The sea was all of a glimmer and glitter. "I shude think we was nearly where they fish be," said John. "Bit farther," said Tony. "Us'll drift back 'long when the flid tide makes." "Du as yu'm minded to." "Steer her a little bit in," directed Tony. "A li'l bit out," directed John the next minute. It was a middle course that turned out so happily. We shot our nets-seven fortyfathom nets we had aboard-between the dying sunset and the rising moon. Very still was the sea, and quiet, except where the crews of the other drifters were shooting too. The talk lingered on the water; small voices that yet sounded strong. By the light of the moon I counted twenty-seven drifters, some of them great harbor craft from Cornwall, carrying twelve or more nets. It seemed as if not a herring on that little fishing ground could escape the long fleets of net. We lighted the paraffin flare; supped on sandwiches and oily hottedup tea. We stamped about the sternsheets to try and warm our feet. We thought we smelt fish, but it might have been only the smoke from the oil and the smell of the herring roe plastered about the boat. Despairing of sleep in such a cold, we sang and smoked. Presently a plash of oars. Little punts were detaching themselves from the larger drifters, and were flitting about on the sea like slow-winged moon-butterflies. One came along The fish-gossip over, we knew most of the news' of our stretch of coast. After taking another cigarette and another pull at our "drop o' summut short," the man in the punt rowed off to his drifter. "D'yu know your fourth buoy's awash?" he shouted back. "Is it, by God?" said John. "I can see 'tis," said Tony. "G'out! Why didn't 'ee see 'twas afore, then? Let's go an' luke." We buoyed the end of the road and started rowing along the line of netbuoys. The fourth was bobbing up and down. The fifth appeared only now and then. None of the others was visible. "We'm going to see some sport!" shouted John, as we hastened back to take up the road. We tugged on oilskins and then waited watchfully-for the inside net also to fill. The third buoy disappeared. The second went awash. "Now 'tis time, ain't it?" "Iss, I reckon." We bent to it and began to haul. The road came in heavy; John hauled and Tony coiled. As the net approached we saw a shimmer in the water, not of sea-fire-it was too cold -but of silver-sided herring. Then John took the foot of the net, Tony the mesh, and myself the headrope. One strain. . . . "Altogether!" Net and fish came in over the gunwale. "No use to try an' pick 'em out yer," said John. "Us 'ould never ha' got 'em in wi' two," panted Tony. "Haul, casn'! Trim the boat. We'm going to hae all us can carry if t'other nets be so full as thees yer." We hauled, and pulled, and puffed, and swore. The fish came over the side like a band of great jewels, like shining grains on a huge and neverending ear of corn, like a burnished steel mat. . . . It was as if the moonlight itself, that flooded air and water, was solidifying into fish in the dimmer depths of the sea. A good catch must have dropped back out of the net. At times it seemed as if nothing could move the headrope. I jammed a knee against the gunwale, waited till the dipping of the boat gave me a foot or two of line, then jammed again to hold it. The seabirds screeched at their feast. Tony, an inflated manikin, jigged about on the piled-up nets and fish. "Help! help!" he cried to the next drifter. "Us got a catch." "Hould yer row!" "Help! help!" "Shut up, you fool! We'm not done yet. Thee doesn't want to pay for help, dost?" We hauled, pulled, puffed and swore again. Yard by yard the nets came up, now foul, now broken, now tangled, now wound about the headrope and almost solid with fish. "Oh, my poor back!" "Lord, my arms!" "Casn' thee trim the boat better'n that?" "Wher's 'er down tu?" "There's only two strakes to spare." The water was within less than a foot of the gunwale, and we were five or six miles from home. "Help, help!" shouted Tony again, and this time we let it pass. Five out of our seven nets were aboard; we could not take the remaining two. Another drifter came alongside and took in the sixth net. "Come on! here's the seventh-the last." "Can't take no more." "Ther's on'y thees yer outside net. Casn' thee take that?" "Can't du it. We'm leaking now. Here's your headrope. Gude-night.' Tony gave a gesture of despair. "What shall us du? Us can't take in much more." "Hould yer row an' haul!" The last net was fuller than ever. We hauled in half of it. A punt came near. "Can 'ee take one net?" yelled Tony. "Us got 'en half in now," John protested. "Iss, but the wind's gone round north-easterly, dead against us. An' luke at the circle round the mune. Ther's wind in thic sky, I tell 'ee. Us got so much now as we can carry home on a calm sea, let 'lone choppy." We cut the net. "Hurry up! Hoist sail an' get in With two oars out to windward we started beating home. We made a tack out to sea. There the waves skatted in over the bows, for the deeply-laden boat is down by the head because the heavy pile of net and fish prevented the water from running aft where we could have baled it out. If we had had to tack much farther out to sea we should have lost the catch and perhaps ourselves. We put the boat round towards Seacombe. "Luff her up all yu can," said John. "Luff her up, I tell thee, or we'm never going to fetch. The sea's rising an' us an't got nort to spare." By keeping the luff of the sail in a flutter, sometimes even too much into the wind, I just fetched. Then we rowed into smoother water. 66 "'Tis more'n that," said Tony, with a note of respect in his voice. "Better wait till they sends some boats out. Us can't baych the boat wi' thees weight in her." We yelled, anchored, then waited; yelled and waited. Some one came at last. The great heavy mast was sent ashore. Two boat-loads of net and fish followed, and lastly the drifter herself was beached. The crowd that had gathered on the beach worked at the winch and ropes. We walked about among them answering questions, but for the moment doing nothing. We felt we had a right to watch the landlubbers work for the herrings we threw out to them. We had been to sea; had caught the catch of the season. Coming in house, I fried some herrings for supper. "So full as eggs" they were. Tony and John went back to the boat. All night long they worked under the moon, drawing out the net and picking the fish from it, standing knee-deep in fish, spotted with scales like sequins. Far into Sunday they worked, counting and packing the fish, whilst the Sunday folk in their best clothes strolled along the sea-wall and sniffed. Twenty-two long-thousand herrings -all dirty and blood-stained-were carted up to the station. Twenty-eight hours Tony and John had worked. Then they washed, picked herring scales off themselves, and rested. The The Albany Review. skin was drawn tightly over their faces and, as it were, away from their eyes. I saw, as I glanced at them, what they will look like when they are old men; the skull and crossbones half peeped out. And I said to myself, "When we feed on herrings we feed on fishermen too. Though we don't cook human meat, we are cannibals yet. We eat each other's lives." Rightly considered, that's not a nasty thought. Nor a new one either. Stephen Reynolds. (To be concluded.) THE WANING OF THE PUNSTER. The Punster, a species of the genus humorist, does not imitate the second Charles and apologize to every one for being "so long a-dying." He lingers on. His punning life hangs temporarily on a thread, but that thread will last. The punster will never be an extinct species of the genus humorist. The pun has in itself a wonderful vitality. It is for a while brilliant: apparently it becomes decrepit: it wanes: apparently it dies out: its transmigrations and transmogrifications are wellnigh endless. Then, ages after its first utterer has passed away, it reappears in its simplest form, and enjoys a fresh term of successful existence. By "variations and permutations" the good pun and the excruciatingly bad pun never die. There are ad captandum puns whose life and success depend entirely on the popularity of whatever it may be that started them. These are ephemeral witticisms. Some puns are feeble, and their life is brief: some are still-born. The Joke-market fluctuates; sometimes it is in a state of depression. It was John Dennis who said "He that would make a pun would pick a pocket," and in a note to "The Dunciad" (edited by G. R. Dennis, B.A. Lond.) we are reminded how frequently are to be found in "Mr. Dennis's works, notable examples of this kind" of pun. Thus he writes of "Alexander Pope, who hath sent abroad into the world as many bulls as his namesake Pope Alexander." Here is the genuine quotation: A man who would make so vile a pun. would not scruple to pick a pocket. What may have been the pun that elicited this denunciation, matters not a jot. We have seen the sort of punster that John Dennis was. The condemnation is not of general but of particular application, and cannot honestly be quoted as affecting puns and punsters en bloc. "The greatest authors," says Addison in The Spectator, No. 61, quoted in Latham's Johnson's Dictionary, "in their most serious works made frequent use of puns. The sermons of Bishop Andrews and the tragedies of Shakespeare are full of them." According to received tradition, it was owing to the pun "Non angli sed angeli," uttered by Pope Gregory, on beholding the fair-haired Anglian slave-boys in the Roman market, that Augustine received his mission to preach Christianity to Ethelbert. And, with all reverence be it spoken, the office and position of St. Peter himself was marked by the solemn emphasis on the similitude between "Petrus” and "petra," both in the original SyroChaldaic language and in its translation in Latin and Greek. This impressive play on words which is preserved in French, but lost to us in English, reminds us of Addison's opinion, as given us in his "Dialogues on the Usefulness of Ancient Models," that "a pun can be no more engraven, than it can be translated." Punning was a serious literary and conversational fashion in the time of Sir Thomas More. We are accustomed to it in Shakespeare's tragedies, comedies, and farces. Ben Jonson indulges in it occasionally, the double meaning being as a rule conveyed to audience, or reader, through the names of the characters. For example, in The New Inn, the landlord asks Lovel: "But is your name Love-ill, sir, or Love-well?" Neither Massinger nor Ford permitted themselves to indulge, excepting exceptions, in such puns. In the later dramatists any play on words, i. e. pun, is rarely to be found apart from the list of the dramatis persona. Take at haphazard the "dram pers" of Farquhar's Love and a Bottle, written when he was twenty. Roebuck is a wild roving Irishman; Lovewell is the worthy lover; Mockmode is a young squire setting up for a beau; Lyric is a poet; Pamphlet a bookseller; Rigadoon a dancing master; Nimblewrist a fencing master; and so forth. In The beaux-stratagem we find Count Bellair, Aimwell, and Archer, Freeman, Giblet, Hounslow, and Bagshot (three highwayLIVING AGE. VOL. XLI. 2167 men), Lady Bountiful, and Mrs. Sullen. A style of nomenclature that, as far as the stage is concerned, is now only to be met with in a bill of a Christmas pantomime. The word "pun," in the accepted sense now given to it, never occurs in Shakespeare. It is used by him once only, in Troilus and Cressida; Thersites (a deformed and scurrilous Grecian in a dialogue with Ajax) says: "He would pun thee into shivers with his fist as a sailor breaks a biscuit." Here it simply means, as the glossary of the Temple Edition explains, "to pound, dash to pieces." If in Shakespeare's time they had not the word "pun," they had the genuine article itself in what we should now consider its earliest, and, it may be said, its lowest form. The "pun" was then a "quaint conceit," "a quip," "a crank," "a merrie jest," and so forth. Curiously enough, the (publisher's or editor's) preface to Troilus and Cressida (Quarto 2, 1609) commences with the punning dedication addressed by "A never writer to an ever reader." Charles Dickens punned easily, but rarely, and then unexpectedly. The instances in his works are not numerous, but all humorous. At haphazard I take one from "Pickwick" (vol. ii. p. 147). When at Bath that amiable individual is introduced to three ladies with whom he is compelled to take a hand at whist: "Mr. Pickwick bowed to each of the ladies, and, finding escape unprofitable, cut." Charles Lever's earlier works present a pretty fair stock of puns, good, bad, and indifferent. Thackeray avoids them, except in his burlesque novels. You may remember in "A Legend of the Rhine" how the reckless Wolfgang fell in love with the demon lady. "He thought he would try a devilled turkey wing. 'I adore the |