r and John and Isabel and Margaret and Rupert and
Stephanie and little Foch began life as whitebait. They used to charge
about the Cornish seas with whole platefuls of other whitebait,
millions of them, and wherever they went they were pursued by
thousands of mackerel, who wanted to eat them. One day John felt that
the moment was very near when he would be eaten by a mackerel, and he
was quite right. Isabel felt the same thing, but she was wrong.
She jumped out of the water and was eaten by a sea-gull. When the
fishermen saw Isabel leaping into the air they came out and caught
the mackerel in a net. They also caught Margaret with a lot of other
whitebait; and she was eaten by a barrister at "Claridge's."

There were now four of the family who had not been eaten by anyone. It
is extraordinary when you come to think of it that any herring ever
contrives to reach maturity at all. What with the mackerel and the
seagulls and the barristers, everybody seems to be against it.
However, Walter, Rupert and Foch succeeded. Stephanie just missed.
Walter and Rupert and Foch had jolly soft roes, a fact which is
recorded in a cynical little poem by the precocious Foch, believed
to be the only literary work of a whitebait now extant. We have only
space here to quote the opening couplet:--

The herrings with the nice soft rows
Are gentlemen; the rest are does.

The survivors of the family had now to choose a career. From the
beginning it seems to have been recognised that Stephanie at least
would have to be content with a humbler sphere than her more gifted
brothers. She had a hard roe and was rather looked down upon. But she
was an independent little thing and her pride revolted at a life of
subjection at home; so while still a girl she went off on her own and
got mixed up with some pilchards who were just being caught in a net.
Stephanie was caught too and became a sardine. She was carefully oiled
and put in a tin, and she was eaten at a picnic near Hampton Court.
But there is every reason to suppose that she was eaten happy, since
in those less exacting circles nobody seemed to mind about her hard
roe, which had been a perpetual bugbear to her in the herring world.

Meanwhile the remaining three had decided on a career. They were
determined to be fresh herrings. This is of course the highest
ambition of all herrings, though sadly few succeed in attaining it.
One herring in his time plays many parts (SHAKESPEARE); he can seldo