'I perceive,' said the quiet person upon the couch, 'that you are asking me a question; but really the _rhumatis_, (this is the way in which the quiet person upon the couch thought proper to pronounce it,) has, I think, quite got the better of my right ear. Would you do me the favour,' continued he, turning the left side of his head toward his interlocutor with the suavity of a person already obliged, 'would you do me the great favour to repeat your enquiry?' 'I asked you,' said the other, growing scarlet in the gills like the shad of his imagination, 'I--merely--asked--you,'--for he began (I thought at the time) to grow vexed with the absurdity of his position in having given utterance to a conception at once so feeble and yet so eccentrick; and being a coarse man, could only get out by passionately going through what he had to say; 'if--you--were--fond--of--Fish?' And on this occasion each word seemed to me to have the force of a pistol-shot, and the last word that of a cannon ball; and he rose as he spoke like a man of might and purpose as he was, and clenched his hand, and quivered upon the stout bow legs that sustained him as he stood: '_Fish_,' roared he! 'FISH,' shouted he! 'I asked you if you were fond of FISH,' thundered he! 'I quite regret being so very deaf to-day, and yet I should be sorry,' replied his imperturbable friend, fumbling in his pockets and looking about the couch, 'to lose any observation of yours, and particularly one in which you seem so earnest; here is a piece of paper, and here is a pencil; be kind enough to write it down while I get on my glasses.' By the time his eyes were reinforced the paper was ready, and glancing it over he answered at once, raising himself suddenly upward, as he exclaimed at the utmost reach of his voice and with deep and increasing energy, 'Oh, Very!' '_Very!_' 'VERY!' 'Good morning, Mr. Johnson,' said his now blown and indignant visitor. 'Are you off? Well, good morning, captain!' replied the other; and as soon as the door was closed, 'My neighbor Captain Tompkins, I am sorry to perceive, has grown quite as deaf as myself,' said he in a musing manner. 'If I had his legs--'tis there he has the advantage of me--if I had his legs, I could have collected all the news of the parish in the time that he has been prosing here about my mare! And I wanted too to know something this morning about shad. Here, Sally! tell Bob to run down the lane and find out whether Enoch Smith is going to draw soon; and if Bob meet any persons on the way with shad let him ask the price of the day before he says a word to Smith.'