Outside of the buildin', when at last we did tear ourselves away from
that seen of enchantment, and went outside, I upheld by my motive to see
everything I could, and Josiah by the idee that we would step into a
restaurant that wuzn't fur away.
When outside we see a lot of ponds all illustratin' the best way of pond
culture, and all sorts of aquatic plants.
Wall, at Josiah's request, we went to the nighest place and had a cup of
tea and a good little lunch.
And then we went back to see the fish-hooks and things that is in the
west buildin' of the group.
Josiah said mebby he could git his eye on some new kind of a fish-hook.
He said he'd love to go beyend Deacon Henzy and Sime Yerden if he
could--they boasted so over their tackle.
And truly I should have thought he might have gone ahead of anything, or
anybody, if he could have carried 'em home. There wuz everything that
could be thought on, or that ever wuz seen in the form of fishin'
apparatus--every kind of hook, and spear, and rod, and queer-lookin'
baskets and pots, and tackle to catch eels and lobsters, and then there
wuz models of fishin' boats and vessels, and everything else under the
sun that any fisherman ever sot eyes on, from Josiah back to the
Postles, and from the Postles down to any fishin' club in 1893.
Why, if you'll believe it--and I d'no as I would blame you if you
wouldn't, it bein' a fish story, as it were--but we did see some
fish-hooks from Pompeii that had been buried 2000 years, and come out
fish-hooks after all--a good deal like them Josiah uses in Jonesville
creek.
And speakin' of old things, we see some fishes that day--the oldest in
the world; they come from Colorado--dug out of the rocks of ages ago;
they wuz covered with bone instead of scales, which showed that they had
had a pretty hard time on't.
[Illustration: They wuz covered with bone instead of scales.]
And then there wuz a big collection of nets made by the Indians from
seal sinew, seal-skin braided, roots of willow tree, and whalebone.
Of these last it took four men three weeks to make one, and two of these
wuz gin in exchange for a jug of molasses to make rum with.
A shame and a disgrace! No savage would have cheated so--no, it takes a
white man to do that.
And we see artificial flies so nateral that a spider would go to weavin'
a net to catch it.
And artificial grasshoppers, and crickets, and frogs, and little
artificial minney fish made of metal, glass, pearl, and rubber. Why, if
I had seen one of 'em in the brook that runs through our paster, I
should have been tempted to have bent a pin, and take some weltin' cord
out of my pocket and go to fishin' for it.
And if they fooled me, who am often called very wise, what would you
think of their foolin' a fish, who hain't got any bump of wisdom on
their heads?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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