The bullhead never went back on a friend.  To catch the bullhead it is not necessary to tempt his appetite with porter house steak, or to display an expensive lot of fishing tackle.  A pin hook, a piece of liver, and a cistern pole, is all the capital required to catch a bullhead.  He lays upon the bottom of a stream or pond in the mud, thinking.  There is no fish that does more thinking or has a better head for grasping great questions, or chunks of liver than the bullhead.  His brain is large, his heart beats for humanity, and if he can’t get liver, a piece of a tin tomato can will make a meal for him.  It is an interesting study to watch a boy catch a bullhead.  The boy knows where the bullhead congregates, and when he throws in his hook it is dollars to buttons that “in the near future” he will get a bite.  The bullhead is democratic in all its instincts.  If the boy’s shirt is sleeveless, his hat crownless, and his pants a bottomless pit, the bullhead will bite just as well as though the boy is dressed in purple and fine linen, with knee breeches and plaid stockings.  The bull head seems to be dozing—­bulldozing we might say—­on the muddy bottom, and a stranger might say that he would not bite.  But wait.  There is a movement of his continuation, and his cow-catcher moves gently toward the piece of liver.  He does not wait to smell of it, and canvas in his mind whether the liver is fresh.  It makes no difference to him.  He argues that here is a family out of meat.  “My country calls and I must go,” says the bullhead to himself, and he opens his mouth and the liver disappears.

It is not certain that the boy will think of his bait for half an hour, but the bullhead is in no hurry.  He lays in the mud and proceeds to digest the liver.  He realizes that his days will not be long in the land, or water, more properly speaking, and he argues if he swallows the bait and digests it before the boy pulls him out, he will be just so much ahead.  Finally the boy thinks of his bait, and pulls it out, and the bullhead is landed on the bank, and the boy cuts him open to get the hook out.  Some fish only take the bait gingerly, and are only caught around the selvage of the mouth, and they are comparatively easy to dislodge.  Not so with the bullhead.  He says if liver is a good thing you can’t have too much of it, and it tastes good all the way down.  The boy gets down on his knees to dissect the bullhead, and get his hook, and it may be that the boy swears.  It would not be astonishing, though he must feel, when he gets his hook out of the hidden recesses of the bullhead, like the minister that took up a collection and didn’t get a cent, though he expressed his thanks at getting his hat back.  There is one drawback to the bullhead, and that is his horns.  We doubt if a boy ever descended into the patent insides of a bullhead, to mine for Limerick hooks, that did not, before his work was done, run a horn into his vital parts.  But the boy seems to expect it, and the bullhead enjoys it.  We have seen a bullhead lay on the bank and become dry, and to all appearances dead to all that was going on, and when the boy sat down on him and got a horn in his elbow, and yelled murder, the bullhead would grin from ear to ear, and wag his tail as though applauding for an end core.