After all, however, his fish were really great curiosities; and when he had exhibited them all over the town, set them out in all lights, praised their perfections, and taken immense pains to conceal his impatience and ill temper, he, at length, contrived to sell them all, and get exactly fourteen shillings for them, and no more.

“Now, I’ll tell you what, Tom Turner,” said he to himself, “I’ve found out this afternoon, and I don’t mind your knowing it,—­that every one of those customers of yours was your master.  Why! you were at the beck of every man, woman, and child that came near you;—­obliged to be in a good temper, too, which was very aggravating.”

“True, Tom,” said the man in green, starting up in his path.  “I knew you were a man of sense; look you, you are all workingmen; and you must all please your customers.  Your master was your customer; what he bought of you was your work.  Well, you must let the work be such as will please the customer.”

“All workingmen?  How do you make that out?” said Tom, chinking the fourteen shillings in his hand.  “Is my master a workingman; and has he a master of his own?  Nonsense!”

“No nonsense at all; he works with his head, keeps his books, and manages his great mills.  He has many masters; else why was he nearly ruined last year?”

“He was nearly ruined because he made some newfangled kinds of patterns at his works, and people would not buy them,” said Tom.  “Well, in a way of speaking, then, he works to please his masters, poor fellow!  He is, as one may say, a fellow-servant, and plagued with very awkward masters.  So I should not mind his being my master, and I think I’ll go and tell him so.”

“I would, Tom,” said the man in green.  “Tell him you have not been able to better yourself, and you have no objection now to dig up the asparagus bed.”

So Tom trudged home to his wife, gave her the money he had earned, got his old master to take him back, and kept a profound secret his adventures with the man in green.

Jean Ingelow.

[Illustration:]

“Every minnow in the stream (they are very scarce, mind you) has a silver tail.”  Here we have a group of words in parenthesis.  Read the sentence aloud several times, omitting the group in parenthesis.  Now read the whole sentence, keeping in mind the fact that the words in parenthesis are not at all important,—­that they are merely thrown in by way of explanation.  You notice that you have read the words in parenthesis in a lower tone and faster time. Groups of words like the above are not always enclosed by marks of parenthesis; but that makes no difference in the reading of them.

The following examples are taken from “The Martyr’s Boy,” page 243. 
Practice on them till you believe you have mastered the method.

I never heard anything so cold and insipid (I hope it is not wrong to say so) as the compositions read by my companions.