54 THE OPEN AIR. 



nothing cheerfully. The fashionable throng hastens 

 to and fro, but the row leaning against the railings 

 do not stir. 



Doleful tales they have to tell any one who inquires 

 about the fishing. There have been " no herrings " 

 these two years. One man went out with his smack, 

 and after working for hours returned with one sole. 

 I can never get this one sole out of my mind when 

 I see the row by the rails. While the fisherman was 

 telling me this woeful story, I fancied I heard voices 

 from a crowd of the bigger boys collected under a 

 smack, voices that said, "Ho! ho! Go on! you're 

 kidding the man ! " Is there much " kidding " in this 

 business of fish ? Another man told me (but he was 

 not a smack proprietor) that 50, 70, or 80 was a 

 common night's catch. Some people say that the 

 smacks never put to sea until the men have spent 

 every shilling they have got, and are obliged to sail. 

 If truth lies at the bottom of a well, it is the well of 

 a fishing boat, for there is nothing so hard to get at 

 as the truth about fish. At the time when society 

 was pluming itself on the capital results attained by 

 the Fisheries Exhibition in London, and gentlemen 

 described in the papers how they had been to market 

 and purchased cod at sixpence a pound, one shilling 

 and eightpence a pound was the price in the Brighton 

 fishmongers' shops, close to the sea. Not the least 

 effect was produced in Brighton; fish remains at 

 precisely the same price as before all this ridiculous 

 trumpeting. But while the fishmongers charge two- 

 pence each for fresh herrings, the old women bring 

 them to the door at sixteen a shilling. The poor who 



