From the _Fishing Gazette_ I take the following story:--
Last spring, while a party of tourists were fishing up North, a well-known lawyer lost his gold watch from the boat in which he was sitting. Last week he made another visit to the lakes, and during the first day's sport caught an 8lb. trout. His astonishment can be imagined when he found the watch lodged in the throat of the trout. The watch was running, and the time correct. It being a "stem winder," the supposition is that, in masticating its food, the fish wound up the watch daily.
I happen to know that this story is incomplete, and I venture to add some missing details. The fish--a particularly thoughtful animal--finding that there was no chain to the watch, resolved to supply this defect, and, by a well-known process in metallurgy, converted some of its scales into a complete Albert, which it connected with the watch. The watch used to lose two minutes a week. With admirable patience the fish regulated it, and restored it to its owner in perfectly accurate trim. When it was originally lost the watch was a simple one. It has now become a repeater, with a special dial indicating the days of the week, the month, and the year A.D. By a trick, learnt from a fried whiting in early life this trout contrived every day to insert its tail into its mouth, and, by using it as a brush, to keep the watch clean, and free from rust. When the fish had been boiled and eaten, the watch stopped, out of sympathy, and has not gone since.
_Generous Dealer_ (_examining ring_). "HE ASKS TWENTY. HE THINKS HE'LL GET EIGHTEEN. IT'S WORTH SIXTEEN. I'LL GIVE FOURTEEN. HE PAID TWELVE. I'LL OFFER TEN!"]
Better fifty years of Europe Than a cycle of Porkopolis! Freedom's shackled with a new rope In Mock-Modesty's metropolis. Ladies--aye and men--in tights To Chicago prudes proves shockers; So they limit wheelman rights By forbidding--knickerbockers! Nay, the manly human calf To these Aldermen's so shocking, They prohibit--do not laugh!-- All display of--the male--stocking!!
We must don a costume baggy From the throat unto the ankles; Something stuffy, chokey, draggy! Yah! In freemen's hearts it rankles This restriction. Don't let's heed 'em! If they bother thus our biking. Ho! for Battersea and freedom! Cyclists of Chicago, striking, Like their sires for Independence, 'Gainst the prigs our wheel-rights blocking, Claim, in all their old resplendence, Knicker free and liberal stocking!