Literary “License.”

Te Aroha News, Volume XXII, Issue 42770, 26 August 1905, Page 2

Literary “License.”

The other day a London, paper, famous for its enterprising hunt for sensation, for once did itself justice with this astounding intelligence : —Daily the interest of our thronging bird life grows. See the white-bait, slim and tiny, a wanderer from the far south, putting on all the airs of an outraged householder because some warbler has trespassed upon his dozen yards of hedge. What magniloquence in the jerky little song of triumph that, with swelled crest and bulging throat, he Sings after the baffled intruder, attitudinising like some famous tenor on the top of a bramble twig.” I knew we should come to something of this sort when the Government insisted on lumping together fisheries and agriculture under one Board, although I never quite anticipated the joys of hearing the juvenile herring or the infant sprat —for these are what constitute the whitebait of the aldermanic banquet —sweetly tootling his love song to the mom from the top twig of the garden fence; in fact, I never heard before of the herring singing anything but “ Roe, brothers roe!”

But a j oumal of family interest went one funnier than this last week with the following domestic note : “The Gudgeon.—• Fishing hascommenced. Let ‘Vera’ ask you to cook the fiish the male folk bring home; if they do not eat they will appreciate it. What is richer than a dish of gudgeon ? They are nicer than any smelts or a stuffed barbel. Catch one yourself, well wash in salted water and bury in salt till next day. After emptying the fish have ready a good forcemeat, as you would do for a beef heart; stuff it well, and wrap in buttered paper, and set in a buttered tin, put into a good oven. Baste the fish often with liquor that runs from the fish, then send to table in good rich gravy. Should any be left, mince it next day just as you would veal.” As a fair-sized gudgeon weighs about threehalfpence and a coupie of postage stamps with its head and tail and its inside furniture com' plete, and three or four ofthefish are usually allowed in the bill of fare for each person, the advice to mince up what is left of one after the whole family have gorged-themselves on it is a distinct injustice to the cat. I really think “ Vera ” must be some near relative of the unhappy’ editor who got the communications of two correspondents so mixed that he replied to the anxious mother of fractious twins occupied in the painful operation of outting their first teeth and letting everybody know it—“ The only reliable remedy is to soak the little pests with kerosine and set a match to them,” while the unfortunate ruralis't, dwelling in a swampy district and worried with mosquitoes, was cheerfully advised that “the best means of alleviating the situation was to? give each little creature half an ounce of castor oil every other day, and rub its gums Avith the back of a hone spoon.”