Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1884 — The Shark, the Pollock and the Shad. [ARTICLE]

The Shark, the Pollock and the Shad.

In the same inlet there lived a Shark, a Pollock and'a Shad. The Shark was born tired knd seldom exerted itself to do anything but rasp out an occasional imprecation, and eati The Pollock was a lively young fop, who was forever rubbing his stomach with his hands and courting the best society. The Shad honestly attended to his business of getting his body into trim to be made -into a Sardine. “What a low-lived fellow Shad is,” Pollock remarked to Shad one day. ”Yes. There’s something wrong about his character, I’m thinking. I’m not sure but we owe it to ourselves to wipe him out.” “Bight you are; and if you will roll onto your back, and get ready for him, I’ll drive him this way, and you can gobble him up. Then will morality and good government be vindicated, and the neighborhood rid of a pest.” So the Shark got into position, and the Pollock made a dash for the unoffending Shad; which, frightened 'most out of its wits, rushed this way and that, and finally into the sepulcher prepared for it. The Pollock was in hot pursuit, and just as the grand object was consummated, the Shark gave a flip of his tail, shot ahead six feet, and the Pollock was calmly sleeping by the side of the ill-fated Shad. As the Shark rolled back into his normal position he winked at a Frog who had been witnessing the tragedy from a neighboring rock, and wiped bos lips with a devil’s apron, softly sighing: “Green but tender.” This fdble teaches that the prudent physician does not take his own medicine; also, that when big fish want to take in partners it is always in order to ask a definition of the word “in.”— Portland Transcript