Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1878 — A Fish Story. [ARTICLE]

A Fish Story.

The pleasing picture of the lowa heroine, who had two pickerel under harness, and was drawn up and down a pond in a beautiful little boat, was the sweetest story ever clipped with an exchange editor’s shears. But who shall say that the ingenuity of the local chronicler has got to the end of its tether and devised the sweetest possible fish story ? Here is the Whitehall Times, for instance, with a romance of the queen of the speckled beauties. A man has an artificial trout pond with at least 3,000 fish, each weighing from half a pound to two pounds, more or less. He also has a little girl, 5 years old, who has succeeded in training the fish so that she can go to the edge of the pond and, with a handful of crumbs, feed them from her chubby hand. They have learned to jump out of the water and snatch worms from her fingers, and they are extremely fond of their little mistress. One day she lost her balance, and pitched headlong into the water where it was deep. She says that when she went “way down ” she called lustily for help. Her cries quickly attracted her parents, and they were horrified at seeing the little girl floating upon the surface of the pond. The father rushed to the water’s edge and reached out for his pet, and, as he raised her from the water, a perfectly solid mass of trout was found beneath her. These faithful subjects of the little queen, as she fell, quickly gathered beneath her, and thus showed their love for their mistress by bearing up her body until aid arrived, thus preventing her from meeting a watery grave.— New York