EXPERIENCES & REMINISCENCES. 95 



partaken of them with much relish. Mr. Hopper believes that 

 his friends had a good quiet laugh to themselves over this little 

 incident, as they related to Mr. Hopper on his return with much 

 gusto, how much their friends had enjoyed the steamed barbel. 

 By jove! Barbel without stuffing and gravy! Mr. Hopper's 

 palate revolts against such a dish so served up, but " where 

 ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." Witchdorter 

 also took his two barbel home with him and exhibited 

 them for one week in the Cleethorpes aquarium in the 

 natural history and curiosity department, where they 

 excited very considerable interest, and the receipts of 

 that very entertaining resort were in consequence very 

 much augmented at the end of the week of show. Mr. 

 Hopper assumes that being fresh water fish, they would be 

 decidedly fresh at the week's end, but he believes that that 

 little incident would, and in fact did not deter some enterprising 

 fish gourmand from making a modest outlay in the purchase 

 and treating his palate to a delicacy it had not before ventured 

 on. The result of such experiment had not reached Mr. 

 Hopper at the time of penning these notes and probably never 

 will. Mr. Hopper, however, devoutly wishes that barbel 

 partaker is still alive and has come to no harm ! with that 

 pious wish he will take leave of the barbel species until the 

 season of 1894, when he intends, health permitting, yet once 

 again to make an onslaught upon that game and sportive 

 species of the finny tribe. 



And now Mr. Hopper must eat humble pie ; he feels 

 levelled to the dust ; in fact he is grovelling therein. Query : 

 Can man grovel in the dust is it not rather the mire ? But 

 whether dust or mire, Mr. Hopper is grovelling, and all 

 through Witchdorter, who has brought him to book about his 

 spelling. Mr. Hopper has never claimed to be infallible, but 

 he did think he was a fair speller ; alas for mortal frailty ! 

 The readers of these notes will have noticed that Mr. Hopper 

 has several times alluded to the large ferryboat as the weighing 

 boat. Until he had heard Witchdorter call it, as he thought 

 the. iioeigJiing- boat, Mr. Hopper had called it the large ferry 



