The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-24

jewels-must frequently rings-on the recovery of which depend kingdom. or honor, or happiness. When Sakhar, who had stolen the signet of Solomon and by its yirture usurped the kind dom, had reigned for the period allot- ted for the Wise Kings punishment, he threw the signet into the sea; a fish swallowed it, was caught, and served up to the eXiled monarch, who was thus enabled to resume his so- Vereignty. Polycrates by way of pro- pitiating Fate, threw his most valued possession, a seal into the sea, and recovered it in a similar way. It was a cOdfish which obligingly sacrificed it. self to return the ring that restored. ''The Fortunate Farmers Daughter"
 to her husbands favor; was salmon which on the intervention of St. Ken tigern. restored to the guilty but re- pentant queen the diamond ring she had parted with as love token, and which her justly jealous spouse had re- covered from the favored Lotbario and thrown into Clyde-which, as we know accounts for the salmon and ring in the arms of the city of Glasgow. And the mention of salmon reminds us-nOt inappropriately in connection with ''jours maigres'-of Levers inimitable stories. Father Tom Loftus was travelling by boat one Friday: "T'he dinner was not over good-but there was a beautiful cut of fried salmon just before me; this slipped quietly on my plate observing to the company:
 Ladies and gentlemen, this is fast day with me-when big fellow with red whiskers stopped across the table, cut my bit of fish ill two halves, call ing out as he cared off one: Bad scran to ye! Dye think nobody has a sowl to be saved but yourself?' |"
 A good many stories, not all quite so harmless, are told about the dangerous fascination the salmon exercised in forbidden seasons on some of the gay viveurs among the old French abbes, and even Chicot's experiment for eat ing fowls on fast day by calling them carp does not err on the side of super f1ous reverence. Apropos of carp, it will be remembered that that fish pro- vided Talleyrand with an opportunity for one of his mordant witticisms. It was a very fine fish that was served at dinner where he was a guest but, unfortunately, it was cold The host referred with pardonable pride to the size of the carp, remarking that it came from his estate in the country. But why did you not have 1t cooked here?" inquired Talleyrand blandly. Frl.z 4f as,Ire I,a haddock and John Dory Is too familiar to bear repetition; the latter fish some how invariably reminds us of In- goldsby and the visit of Rupert the Fearless to Lurline, when
 A Dory-faced page oped dining room door,
 And said, bending his knee, Madame on servi'' the baddoek, too recalls the unfortunate observation. I haven't since was bay" attributed to Pood- Ie Byng, when dining at Belvoir Castle. Turbot and crab and salmon and sprats all figure in Hoods whimsical "Epicu- rean "Reminiscences" Cowper bewailed the High Price of Fish" chiefly, it would seem with reference to the lobster: the turbot recalls that most effective ''score" the messenger boy effected over the famous but par simonious Dean of St. Patrick. It would occupy too much space to recall the numerous references to and theories about the orthodox salt fish. So much abuse has been heaped upon the head of the luckless Cleopatra that one likes to remember that merry inno- cent prank of hers, with it's healthy moral, when Antony would waste the time angling and Cleopatra sent a driver down to affix a salt fish to his hook. And we should never forget that of one species of cured fisb-the her ring-it is said that ''it mainly con tributed to transform small and in- significant. people into mighty na- tion,' and that the greatest Emperor on earth thought it not beneath him to visit the tomb of the humble in-
 ventor of the proces, and there to eat herring and drink a pledge to his
 pious memory.-London Globe.