Morning journal and courier., 1885-01-24
The First Oyster-Eaters.

rom the LOndon leie5fai'Hl
 When the primitive man found himself with the first oyster i'll his hand, the proba- bilities are that he puzzled what to do with it; for the thing was shut. Instinct told him thai there was something good to eat inside the shell. Besides he had already robbed the cookie and the mussel of their contents and thoroughly appreciated them; so by some rude process of reasoning from analysis he felt sure that if he could only get the oyster open he would find something nice within. But the creature had closed itself so tight that he could not even get his nails in between the edges. Its size prevented him putting it into his mouth to crack It. For miles and miles there was only mud and sand on either side of him, so that he had nothing hard enough to smash it upon: In a half-hearted sort of way he endeavored to 1n- sinuate a splinter of 8 cockle-shel to pry the valves open Then he trifed with the thinner edge with his teeth. At last he thought of his own skull and rapped the oys- ter on it; but not very hard, for It huft hlm
 He did it in contemplative sort of way just as a monkey bored to death with Bra gil nut which it cannot break, and yet IS Ioath to throw away, sits and taps It on the palm of it's paw, looking all about hlm With an abstracted expression of face. So sat the aboriginal man; now and again he would brighten up to 8 renewed assault upon the obstinate mollusc. He put it down on the sand and hurt his foot by stamping on It; then he took it and threw it up as high as he could in the air to see if it would smash by the fall; then he put it in front of him and apostrophized it, spoke seriously to It, lec- tured it. scolded it, abused it, coaxed it, flat tered it, said nasty things about it, appealed to it, threw himself on it's generosity, taunt-
 af nlynd prayed to it, blessed it, cursed it. But the oyster was not to be moved either by com piaint or insult; it remained as obdurate as that s'pebble-hearted cur," Launce's dog. Not word could be got out of 1t; there was no more expression on it's face than on slice of cold pudding. It remained stoildly shut. Then our ancestor gave way to a gloomy despair; he threw himself down on the sand and glared with impotent desire at the exasperating shell-fish. Bad, wicked thoughts came into his mind. ne sa" HIS aged grandsire approaching, ana, DecA9nlng to him with fraudful smile, lnouceo the noor old man to sit down on the sand; and then suddenly, without any warning, he smote him on the crown of the head with tbe oyster Again and again the mollusc de- scended, till at length, in frenzy of deter imitation, he gathered up all his force into one decisive blow, which split his grand sires skull, but broke the shell. Thereupon regardless of the corpse beside him, the sassin picked out the plump oyster and swallowed it. He closed his eyes, while smile of ineffable enjoyment stole over his features, but only for moment. The oys- ter passed away like beautiful dream. He sighed and rose. It was fearful price to pay for the delicious morsel. Yet other thoughts perplexed him. His relatives were not numerous, and if he must be obliged to use up one each time when he ate an oyster, he could not look forward to more than couple of score at the most. Nevertheless, he gathered bushel and went home, ponderine over the situation. He told his dreadful secret to a friend, and that very evening, as he was asleep, his friend came and cracked an oyster on his skull. The original savage did not die, but-his intellect