annuitant, the broken-down family, and the capitalist, are all alike
interested in the welcome. The price falls immediately within the compass
of the very poorest inhabitant, while the luxury of the regale it
furnishes is one that the richest epicure might covet. The green lanes
that lead toward the shore, and that at other seasons are hardly visited
except by lovers on a moonlit evening, now grow lively with the morning
movement of the householder and his flock of little ones.

The poor man's cow now no longer browses there in a neglected and
undisturbed possession; now no longer does the stiff and shackled
plough-horse graze leisurely along the path, but is startled by some
youthful shout into an attempt at what was once a leap; now half-ripe
berries are furtively gathered in spite of all advice as to
unwholesomeness; dogs move round as if upon a hunt and on the scent for
game; the yoked goose, after more than one expression of its sense of
dignity, retires a little out of the way; and now the ground sparrow,
deeming his thistle or over-hanging Barberry-bush insecure against the
incursions of all these comers and goers, regrets at a short and watchful
distance, and with all the anxiety of a politician, that he had not built
more wisely under covert of _the other side of the hedge_.

Boys and girls, young men and maidens, old men and widows, meet each other
on the path of the green lane, like angels on the steps of Jacob's Ladder
in a Flemish picture that I have, where the ladder is represented by a
broad stone stair-case; except that blessings are here all brought _up_
instead of _down_, for a brace of Shad is in the hand of every family-man
returning from the shore.

Cordial greetings are every where interchanged, and every where the
question rises or is answered that determines the market value of the
morning; that makes known the signal success of the great haul of Enoch
Smith; the further fall of prices in the perspective; and the general
promise of the season in the way of shad; and all agree that however large
or small may be the supply, never, since the memory of man, have the shad
been quite so good as they are this season; and that Connecticut River
Shad are decidedly the best imaginable of all possible shad.

Having in my purse the ring of Gyges, which is too ponderous for ordinary
wear, I placed it on my finger and accompanied home unseen a hale
bandy-legged old gentleman with a florid complexion, a bene