168 
CAPE COD. 
There was no long interval between the suggestion of 
Smith and the eulogy of Burke. 
Still one after another the mackerel schooners hove in 
sight round the head of the Cape, “ whitening all the sea 
road,’’ and we watched each one for a moment with an 
undivided interest. It seemed a pretty sport. Here in 
the country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that go a- 
fishing on a rainy day ; but there it appeared as if every 
able-bodied man and helpful boy in the Bay had gone 
out on a pleasure excursion in their yachts, and all 
would at last land and have a chowder on the Cape. 
The gazetteer tells you gravely how many of the men 
and boys of these towns are engaged in the whale, cod, 
and mackerel fishery, how many go to the banks of New¬ 
foundland, or the coast of Labrador, the Straits of Belle 
Isle or the Bay of Chaleurs (Shalore the sailors call it) ; 
as if I were to reckon up the number of boys in Concord 
who are engaged during the summer in the perch, pick¬ 
erel, bream, horn-pout, and shiner fishery, of which no 
one keeps the statistics, — though I think that it is pur¬ 
sued with as much profit to the moral and intellectual 
man (or boy), and certainly with less danger to the phys¬ 
ical one. 
One of my playmates, who was apprenticed to a print¬ 
er, and was somewhat of a wag, asked his master one 
afternoon if he might go a-fishing, and his master con¬ 
sented. He was gone three months. When he came 
back, he said that he had been to the Grand Banks, and 
went to setting type again as if only an afternoon had 
intervened. 
I confess I was surprised to find that so many men 
spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, 
a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men 
