Peck's Compendium of Fun: Comprising the Choicest Gems of Wit, Humor, Sarcasm and Pathos of America's Favorite HumoristPeck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Compendium of Fun: Comprising the Choicest Gems of Wit, Humor, Sarcasm and Pathos of America's Favorite Humorist
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor
The late meeting of the State Fish Commissioners at Milwaukee was an
important event, and the discussions the wise men indulged in will be
valuable additions to the literature of the country, and future readers of
profane history will rise up and call them blessed. It seems that the
action of the Milwaukee common council in withdrawing the use of the water
works from the commissioners, will put a stop to the hatching of
whitefish. This is as it should be. The white fish is an aristocratic
bird, that will not bite a hook, and the propagation of this species of
fish is wholly in the interest of wealthy owners of fishing tugs, who have
nets. By strict attention to business they can catch all the whitefish out
of the lake a little faster than the State machine can put them in. Poor
people cannot get a smell of whitefish. The same may be said of brook
trout. While they will bite a hook, it requires more machinery to catch
them than ordinary people can possess without mortgaging a house. A man
has got to have a morocco book of expensive flies, a fifteen dollar bamboo
jointed rod, a three dollar trout basket with a hole mortised in the top,
a corduroy suit made in the latest style, top boots of the Wellington
pattern, with red tassels in the straps, and a flask of Otard brandy in a
side pocket. Unless a man is got up in that style, a speckled trout will
see him in Chicago, first, and then it won't bite. The brook trout is even
more aristocratic than the whitefish, and should not be propagated at
public expense.
But there are fish that should be propagated in the interest of the
people. There is a species of fish that never looks at the clothes of the
man who throws in the bait, a fish that takes whatever is thrown to it,
and when once hold of the hook never tries to shake a friend, but submits
to the inevitable, crosses its legs and says "Now I lay me," and
comes out on the bank and seems to enjoy being taken. It is a fish that is
a friend of the poor, and one that will sacrifice itself in the interest
of humanity. This is the fish that the State should adopt as its trade
mark, and cultivate friendly relations with, and stand by. We allude to
the bullhead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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