water. Now, how would it do to breed the ordinary codfish with a
sausage-chopper or a mince-meat machine? Do you think a desiccated
codfish would rise to a fly, or wouldn't you have to fish for him with
a colander?' And so he kept reeling out a jackassery like that until
directly he said, 'I'll tell you, professor, what this country needs
is a fresh-water oyster. Now, it has occurred to me that maybe the
best variety to plant would be the ordinary fried oyster. It seems to
be popular, and it has the advantage of growing without a shell.
One of the other commissioners,' so this terrific blockhead said,
'insisted on trying the experiment with the oyster that produces
tripe, so's to enable the people to catch tripe and oysters when they
go a-fishing. But for my part,' says he, 'I want either the fried
oyster or the kind that grow in pie crust, like they have 'em at the
restaurants.' Actually said that.

"Well, he driveled along for a while, talking the awfulest bosh; and
pretty soon he asked me if I was fond of mock-turtle soup. Said
that the commission had discovered the feasibility of adding the
mock-turtle to the food-animals of our rivers. He allowed that he had
understood that they could be cultivated best by spawning calves'
heads on forcemeat balls, and that they were in season for the table
during the same months of the year that gravy is. And he said that a
strenuous effort ought to be made to have our rivers swarming with
this delicious fish.

"And then he talked a whole lot of delirious slush of that kind, and
about improving the tadpole crop, and so on, until I--Wh-wh-what d'you
say? Want me to take my legs off that table and quit? You don't want
to hear any more news about the fisheries? Oh, all right; there's
plenty of other papers that'll be glad to get the intelligence. Next