backwards or forwards. Had you

remem

bered the crab you might not have been taken for a "rat" and been "dead for a ducat." O yes! Hamlet knew you, Polonius, and that is why he called you a fishmonger, and reminded you of the crab, whose motory habit you as a fishmonger ought to have known something about. It would have pointed a

moral for you, and perhaps postponed that untimely "supper "certain convoca

of a

tion of politic worms," who enjoyed their turn to nibble at a fishmonger on the hook.

How now! Why Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are ye here among the fishmongers? Fie upon you, ye youthful courtiers, that ye condescend to such a craft. You have plainly not been bred up to your vocation, you don't seem quite to like your fishmongering, you bungle at it. At your very first trial you flounder and make such a splash that you are more like fish than fishmongers, and are actually caught in your Doff the flannel apron at once, for your old schoolfellow has "an eye of you." Ah! pity you tried the trade again, after your first failure, especially with your 'cute friend,

own net.

Hamlet. He was not so gentle and forgiving the next time he saw you with the strongflavoured apron on. Here, play upon this pipe. You cannot, say you? I do beseech you. What! know no touch of it? 'Tis as easy as lying. Metaphorical fishmongers do a good deal of lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumbs, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops. You cannot command these to any utterance of harmony, eh! you have not the skill, eh? Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me.

You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. S'blood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me!

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Flannel Apron,

-Fishmongers of both sexes, we must be

frank with you and tell you that we don't like your tribe, our olfactory nerves are disagreeably affected in your presence. You are not a fragrant, savoury folk. Let us define you, even at the risk of creating sensations of nausea and imperiling our sermon by obliging us to withdraw from the pulpit. We are not altogether comfortable at the pit of the stomach before we begin, and we took care to provide ourselves with eau-de-cologne and sal-volatile in case of emergency. A little farther back, if you please, madam. We are sorry you are hard of hearing, but we will endeavour to make ourself audible.

The fishmonger metaphorical, then, unlike the generality of fishmongers literal, does his own fishing. He likes the sport of angling and casting the net, and is best pleased when the fish exposed on his counter is the product of his own piscatory industry. The waters he angles in and where he spreads his toils are very broad and of varying degrees of depth, co-extensive indeed with the whole area of social life. Although necessarily confined to

a part of this broad area, every part is so well supplied with fish that each brother and sister of the craft has a full share of the sport and profit. They do a little fishing at home, for there are a few hidden things beneath the surface there to employ the bait and hook of itching curiosity. But the circle of acquaintance -the bigger pond of social friendship-has more attractions, and promises a better take. They never call on their friends without the rod and the net, the flies and hooks, and all the necessary apparatus of their amusement. True to their craft, they are no sooner seated than they know the particular fly and size of the hook for the occasion, and out goes the rod, and the cunning bait dances on the rippling conversation, and the unsuspicious friend, whose shallow sparkling stream of fluent talk has afforded fine sport for the angler and yielded a fish or two to the basket, is left with a smile and thanks, little thinking that he or she has been entertaining a fishmonger, and contributing to the stock of his trade. Away goes the fishmonger, for the trade is peripatetic, to pay another visit, and

fish in another part of the social pond; or it may be to generously expose the fish already taken, and chuckle over it with a fellowfishmonger, and turn it to social account. Among the fish probably was just that particular one that was thought to be in deeper water, and where the angling had been done again and again to no purpose, but which having fortunately got into a shallower part of the pond, had been tickled and risen to the bait. That one is worth a whole basketfull of smaller fry. It may be as big as a secret of state, or an equally important private family matter of evil or good fortune, or a nice plump delicious love business, or a haggard domestic skeleton of conjugal incompatibility, or something about pedigree and the bar sinister in a family escutcheon, or a point of moral delicacy in personal character, or a question of money, or anything else out of the variety of curious private concerns interesting to fishmongers, and worth the time and cunning of their craft. You understand us, don't you, sinister-looking, sinuous, illsavoured fishmongers? This is your defi