SEVENTH EMPTYING. 135 



monger, " but had you not better take whiting ?" " Why, 1 ' 

 said Mr. Black, "what makes you think so?" "Oh! 

 nothing, except that your wife was down here early this 

 afternoon and said if you dropped in with your fishing tackle 

 and a general woe-begone look about you, I had to give you 

 whiting, if possible, as she liked them better than any other 

 kind of fish." 



A friend of mine found himself recently in the company 

 of a fellow railway traveller who bragged tremendously and 

 talked very largely of all the places he had seen, and the 

 countries he had visited. After a while he got on to the 

 lakes and praised in turn Ullswater, Wastwater, Derwent- 

 water, and Keswick Lake. " But I always thought," said 

 my friend, "that Derwentwater and Keswick Lake were 

 synonymous." " Ah, yes," was the answer, "yes, they are 

 synonymous, but Derwentwater is much the more synony- 

 mous of the two, don't cher know." 



# * 



Two men were fishing together, and one fell in ; the other 

 succeeded, after great efforts, in getting him out insensible, 

 and, to all appearance, dead. As he lay on the bank an 

 inanimate mass, his rescuer gazed unconsciously at him, and, 

 scratching his head, said to himself, but audibly, " There 

 are sixteen rules about the treatment of drowned persons, 

 and I cannot remember any of them." " Is there one about 

 whisky ? " said the drowned man in a quiet voice. " Yes," 

 was the reply. " Then never mind the other fifteen," said 

 the corpse. 



* # 



A few years ago I heard an Irish landlord tell this story 

 at a dinner table : He, or a friend of his, I forget which, 

 had received no rents from his Irish tenants for some time, 



