the visitor, in a determined tone, and like a person
who has something to say, 'I asked you, whether you were fond of
Fish?'--Alas! my masters! how many unnecessary, how many futile, how many
absurd questions, among the idle words that are dignified with the title
of conversation, are daily propounded in this grave world of ours! _Fond_
of fish! Fond of _Fish_! and that fish, a Shad! and that shad, a
Connecticut River Shad! and that Connecticut River Shad, a prime brace of
shad! in the highest season, and the highest order, and the finest brace
of shad in the entire haul of Enoch Smith, now yet quivering, without the
loss of one radiant scale, upon the snow-white dresser of this man's
imagination! Ought I to call it, an imagination? Ought I to go on with the
story, or abandon it as an impracticable thing? Fond of fish!

Oh commend me to a life of leisure in a small town upon the right bank of
the River Connecticut, and let my lease begin at the beginning of the shad
season! Give me Enoch Smith to draw the seine, a green lane to conduct me
to the river shore, and a Claude Lorraine morning for my day of purchase!
Fond of Fish! Why what an idea, to be conveyed upon the subject of this
brace of shad, from one Christian Being to another Christian Being, who
had both--as it is to be supposed--read and studied the lives of the
apostles! Fond of Fish!!!

But the stout man, finding that he was not apprehended, reiterated the
remarkable question; and in a still louder tone, exclaimed:
I--asked--you--whether--you--are--fond--of--Fish?' making a pause between
each of these peculiar words, and shooting the last word of the singular
interrogatory out of his mouth, by means of his fore-teeth and a most
emphatic under-lip, as a boy does a marble with the bent fore-finger and
thumb of the right hand.

'I perceive,' said the quiet person upon the couch, 'that you are asking
me a question; but really the _rhumatis_, (this is the way in which the
quiet person upon the couch thought proper to pronounce it,) has, I think,
quite got the better of my right ear. Would you do me the favour,'
continued he, turning the left side of his head toward his interlocutor
with the suavity of a person already obliged, 'would you do me the great
favour to repeat your enquiry?'

'I asked you,' said the other, growing scarlet in the gills like the shad
of his imagination, 'I--merely--asked--you,'--for he began (I thought at
the time) to grow vexed with th