OUR CLOSING DAY. 247 



"" Given is the brook at the foot of the mountains, 



Where cool, sparkling waters'spring'Jresh from the hill ; 

 ■Given eddies and scours, and cascades and fountains. 



For they all rush down through the glen to the mill — 

 And I live at the mill, vfhipping trout from the stream : 

 I followed, was hooked, and need nevermore dream." 



To the sentimental backwoodsman succeeds one who, 

 instead of a prosy conveyancer, should have been, as 

 nature intended him, something in the comic line of life. 

 He does not sing a comic song now, however, since he 

 knows he will by-and-by be called upon willy nilly to 

 repeat certain old favourites of that^ilk. The truth is he 

 has for a week been preparing a string of wretched puns, 

 which he thus runs off the reel, drolly emphasising the words 

 italicised : " Gentlemen, I hope no one will carp at what 

 I'm about to say, or think my remarks an tnc-reack-rasai.. 

 Is it not a fact in natural history that every jFack has his 

 Gill ? It is not every acute angle-x who can keep a pike, or 

 -say with Xh& judicious Hooker, 



" ' I had a bream, a whacking bream, 

 I dreamt that I had three.' 



Before sitting down I should like to'state my ia-tench-ion of 

 presenting to you, though not by any means as an eeltmosy- 

 nary affair, a copy of Mrs. BarbeVs '■Dace abroad and 

 ■evenings at home^ bound in gut-\s. perch-a. ; also to observe 

 that the true motto for every angler is J'm a float. The 



fact is " 



The fact was that the company would have no more 

 rubbish of this sample, though the word-torturer subsequently 

 ■confided to me that his most effective abominations were 

 .unsaid. We, however — the conveyancer's cheap wit must 



