38 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



basket, which we carry home. Take an after- 

 noon in October, with a good breeze blowing, 

 not enough to make the water very rough, and, 

 with my young ones as company, I can get as 

 much real pleasure and certainly as much 

 healthy exercise from oystering in the Great 

 South Bay as from any sport I know of. Then 

 there is the money value of the oysters to be 

 thought of. If I could not get a bushel of 

 oysters in an afternoon, I should have to buy 

 meat. 



I have tried by practical lessons to convince 

 several city friends that there is a joy about 

 scraping the bottom of the sea for oysters 

 beyond any thing that they could have ima- 

 gined. I induced a critical friend of mine to 

 take off his coat one fine afternoon and work 

 the " tongs." The water was pretty rough, and 

 he had to jump about a good deal on deck in 

 order to keep his footing. I should say that in 

 the half-hour he played at oystering, he brought 

 up thirty or forty oysters. At the end of that 

 time he said that he would rather write a two- 

 column article than rake a bushel of oysters, 

 and he smoked cigars and threw shells into the 

 water for the rest of the afternoon. When 



