A Dead Sea Serpent.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1917, 18 October 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Dead Sea Serpent.

A beoent bulletin of the United States Fish Commission gives an interesting correspondence relative to a very peculiar fish —something perhaps between an eel and a shark — that was caught, but not kept, by a Maine fisherman in 1880. It has been frequently referred to as " sea serpent," was 24 feet long and 10 inches in diameter, with tail like an eel and skin like that of a shark, but finer. There were two fins, one on either side, a little baok of the head, with a dorsal fin between them. The fish was dead when caught, but had torn the nets badly.

I attended, a few days ago, a dinner given as a send-off to a friend about to be married. Such affairs are very trying to the victim. He is compelled to sit through a long dinner, with fun, jokes and chaff flying about, with an air of insouciance —a very difficult task. For beneath this assumption of indifference there is a high degree of emotional excitement. To the guest 'there iB to such an occasion, with all its characteristic jollity and levity, a sober side fraught with sentiment and pathos. There is nothing a man prizes so much as genuine friendship and good fellowship, and to receive a formal proof of such feelings is a source of sentimental gratification. The good-bye to the prospective Benedict has a deeper meaning to him than it hag to those who bid it. To him it means an almost complete severance of the intimacy that has bound him and them together. No matter how olo£le the relations may continue to be, they will lack that element of reciprocal unreserved confidence, from which friendly familiarity rises. Ohumminess between men is based principally upon the intimacy of dissipation —what might be called the Free Masonry of gallantry. When a man marries he naturally resigns from the fraternity, and it is for ever;

for even should he fall from grace, and returning to his old habits seek to be readmitted within the fold, he will not be able to recover his former position, He will not be accepted, but merely tolerated. The man of the world understands all this, and to him there is in the good-bye and good wishes extended to him a meaning of sadness, which does not harmonize with the thoughtless boisterousnesa of his friends. . Claibbbau.