As for bathing in the sea, plunging into the surf, with the waves breaking over your head and the water dashing and sparkling all about you, I need not say much about that.  I might as well try to describe the pleasure of eating a saucer of strawberries-and-cream, and you know I could not do it.

There are nations who never see the ocean, nor have anything to do with it.  They have not even a name for it.

They are to be pitied for many things, but for nothing more than this.

THE SICK PIKE.

There is no reason why a pike should not be sick.  Everything that has life is subject to illness, but it is very seldom that any fish has the good sense and the good fortune of the pike that I am going to tell you about.

This pike was a good-sized fellow, weighing about six pounds, and he belonged to the Earl of Stamford, who lived near Durham, England.  His story was read by Dr. Warwick to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool.  I am particular about these authorities because this story is a little out of the common run.

Dr. Warwick was walking by a lake, in the Earl’s park, and the pike was lying in the water near the shore, probably asleep.  At any rate, when it saw the doctor it made a sudden dart into deep water and dashed its head against a sunken post.  This accident seemed to give the fish great pain, for it pitched and tossed about in the lake, and finally rushed up to the surface and threw itself right out of the water on to the bank.

The doctor now stooped to examine it, and to his surprise the fish remained perfectly quiet in his hands.  He found that the skull was fractured and one eye was injured by the violence with which the fish had struck the post.  With a silver tooth-pick (he had not his instruments with him) the doctor arranged the broken portion of the pike’s skull, and when the operation was completed he placed the fish in the water.  For a minute or two the Pike seemed satisfied, but then it jumped out of the water on to the bank again.  The doctor put the fish back, but it jumped out again, and repeated this performance several times.  It seemed to know (and how, I am sure I have not the least idea) that that man was a doctor, and it did not intend to leave him until it had been properly treated—­just as if it was one of his best patients.

The doctor began to see that something more was expected of him, and so he called a game-keeper to him, and with his assistance he put a bandage around the pike’s head.

[Illustration]

When this surgical operation had been completed the pike was put back into the water, and this time it appeared perfectly satisfied, and swam away.

The next day, as Dr. Warwick was sitting by the lake, the pike, with, the bandage around its head, swam up and stuck its head out of the water, near the doctor’s feet.  The good physician took up the fish, examined the wound, and finding that it was getting on very well, replaced the bandage and put Mr. Pike into the lake again.