UT how about killing fish for sport? In the name of sense, man, if God made fish to be eaten, what difference does it make if I enjoy the killing of them before I eat them? You would have none but a fisherman by trade do it, and then you would have him utter a sigh, a prayer, and a pious ejaculation at each cod or haddock that he killed; and if by chance the old fellow, sitting in the boat at work, should for a moment think there was, after all, a little fun and a little pleasure in his

business, you would have him take a round turn with his line, and drop on his knees to ask forgiveness for the sin of thinking there was sport in fishing.

I can imagine the sadfaced melancholy-eyed man, who makes it his business to supply game for the market as you would have him, sober as the sexton in Hamlet, and forever moralizing over the gloomy necessity that has doomed him to a life of murder? Why, good sir, he would

frighten respectable fish, and the market would soon be destitute.

The keenest day's sport in my journal of a great many years of sport was when, in company with some other gentlemen, I took three hundred blue-fish in three hours' fishing off Block Island, and those fish were eaten

40

THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.

the same night or the next morning in Stonington, and supplied from fifty to one hundred different tables, as we threw them up on the dock for any one to help himself. I am unable to perceive that I committed any sin in taking them, or any sin in the excitement and pleasure of taking them.

It is time moralists had done with this mistaken morality. If you eschew animal food entirely, then you may argue against killing animals, and I will not argue with you. But the logic of this business is simply this: The Creator made fish and flesh for the food of man, and as we can't eat them alive, or if we do, we can't digest them alive, the result is we must kill them first, and (see the old rule of cooking a dolphin) it is sometimes a further necessity, since they won't come to be killed when we call them, that we must first catch them. Show first, then, that it is a painful necessity, a necessity to be avoided if possible, which a good man must shrink from and abhor, unless starved into it, to take fish or birds, and which he must do when he does it with regret, and with sobriety and seriousness, as he would whip his

child, or shave himself when his beard is three days old, and you have But till you show this, I will continue to think it great sport

your case.

to supply my market with fish.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

OMEWHAT back from the village | Half-way up the stairs it stands,

street

Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;
Across its antique portico

Tall poplar trees their shadows throw;
And, from its station in the hall,
An ancient timepiece says to all,
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

And points and beckons with its hands,
From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass,

"Forever-never!
Never-forever!"