I find my wife hath something in her gizzard, that only waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up; but I will not, for my... content-sake, give it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One would like to know more of that race, now extinct, whose seines lie rotting in the garrets of their children, who openly profe...ssed the trade of fishermen, and even fed their townsmen creditably, not skulking through the meadows to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim visions we still get of miraculous draughts of fishes, and heaps uncountable by the riverside, from the tales of our seniors sent on horseback in their childhood from the neighboring towns, perched on saddle-bags, with instructions to get the one bag filled with shad, the other with alewives. At least one memento of those days may still exist in the memory of this generation, in the familiar appellation of a celebrated train-band of this town, whose untrained ancestors stood creditably at Concord North Bridge. Their captain, a man of piscatory tastes, having duly warned his company to turn out on a certain day, they, like obedient soldiers, appeared promptly on parade at the appointed time, but, unfortunately, they went undrilled, except in the manvres of a soldier's wit and unlicensed jesting, that May day; for their captain, forgetting his own appointment, and warned only by the favorable aspect of the heavens, as he had often done before, went a-fishing that afternoon, and his company thenceforth was known to old and young, grave and gay, as "The Shad."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Salmon, shad, and alewives were formerly abundant here, and taken in weirs by the Indians ... until the dam and afterward the cana...l at Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put an end to their migrations hitherward; though it is thought that a few more enterprising shad may still occasionally be seen in this part of the river.... Perchance, after a few thousands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass their summers elsewhere meanwhile, nature will have leveled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories, and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be explored by new migratory shoals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea... in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to enter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh...-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy silver birches and watery maples,... a country diversified with innumerable lake...s and rapid streams, peopled with trout ... salmon, shad, and pickerel, and other fishes; the forest resounding at rare intervals with the note of the chickadee, the blue jay, and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish hawk and the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary streams; at night, with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves; in summer, swarming with myriads of black flies and mosquitoes, more formidable than wolves to the white man. Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the wolf, the beaver, and the Indian.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have just come from the beach (to find your letter), and I like it much. Everything there is on a grand and generous scale,--sea...weed, water, and sand; and even the dead fishes, horses, and hogs have a rank, luxuriant odor; great shad-nets spread to dry; crabs and horseshoes crawling over the sand; clumsy boats, only for service, dancing like sea-fowl over the surf, and ships afar off going about their business.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halve...s,--sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Such a style,--so diversified and variegated! It is like the face of a country; it is like a New England landscape, with farmhouse...s and villages, and cultivated spots, and belts of forests and blueberry swamps round about, with the fragrance of shad-blossoms and violets on certain winds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »