It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped
at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish
had been brought aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of
excitement that morning at table. "Fresh fish!" he exclaimed; "actually
fresh! They seem quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can
you tell me, sir," he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, "what
_kind_ of fish these are?" "Cork soles," said the saturnine man, in a
deep voice, and then went on with his breakfast.
LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in General George P. Morris's
line,
"Her heart and morning broke together."
Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, had an attack of the same
platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to
have its mischief-making bacilli. The late "incomparable and ingenious
Dean of St. Paul's" says,
"The day breaks not, it is my heart."
I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the
malady in a milder form when he wrote:
"Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye.
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