CHAPTER XVI.
Wall, this mornin'-- it bein' kind of a muggy and cloudy one, I proposed that we should go and visit the Fishery Department.
And I d'no why I should a thought on it this mornin' more'n another one--only it wuz jest such a day as Josiah and Thomas Jefferson always took for goin' a-fishin' in the creek back of Jonesville.
And then we had fish for breakfast too--siscoes--mebby that put me in mind on it some.
But anyway, I wuz always interested in the subject of fishin', and the hull world is.

For what wuz the Postles?
Fishers.

For what did the Great Master name His beloved?
Fishers of men.
Why, the Bible is full of fishin' and fisherman, clear back to Jonah; and how took up he wuz with a fish, and how full the fish wuz of him! Fishin' wuz the first industry in the New World.
When our Forefathers landed on Plymouth Rock they found the harbor shaped some like a fish-hook, and then consequently they went to fishin'.
Who got Washington and his army over the Delaware River that bitter cold night in 1777, when the fate of our country wuz a-hangin' over that sea of broken ice--ruin on this side, and possible success on the other, but the impassable gulf of bitter cold water and the crashing masses of ice between--who got 'em acrost?
Fisherman.
Our country has always been noted in its interest in fishin'.

Why, at the Internatial Exhibition at Berlin in 1880, America won the first prize given by the Emperor for its display.
And I knew when it done so well on a foreign shore, it wuzn't goin' to make any failure of itself here under its own line, and fish tree, so to speak.
Wall, as I said, Josiah expressed a willingness to go, and consequently and subsequently we went.
Wall, we found it wuz a group of buildin's on a beautiful island--in the northern part of the lagoon, joinin' the improved part of Jackson Park.
There wuz three on em' in number.

The middle one wuz a long buildin' with a high dome, and some towers in the centre on't, and the arches and the pillows wuz all ornamented off with figgers of fishes, and crabs, and lobsters, and all sorts of water growth.