“Naughty fish!” replied Sammy, “they know they’re naughty too, or else they voud’nt be so afear’d o’ the rod!—­here’s your health;” and he tossed off the proffered bumper.

“Excuse me a-rising to return thanks,” replied his friend, grasping Sammy’s hand, and looking at him with that fixed and glassy gaze which indicates the happy state of inebriety, termed maudlin; “I know you’re a sincere friend, and there ain’t nobody as I value more:  man and boy have I knowed you; you’re unchanged! you’re the same!! there ain’t no difference!!! and I hope you may live many years to go a-fishing, and I may live to see it, Sammy.  Yes, old boy, this here’s one of them days that won’t be forgotten:  it’s engraved on my memory deep as the words on a tombstone, ‘Here he lies!  Here he lies!’” he repeated with a hiccup, and rolled at full length across his dear friend.

Sammy, nearly as much overcome as his friend, lifted up his head, and sticking his hat upon it, knocked it over his eyes, and left him to repose; and, placing his own back against an accommodating tree, he dropped his pipe, and then followed the example of his companion.

After a few hours deep slumber, they awoke.  The sun had gone down, and evening had already drawn her star-bespangled mantle over the scene of their festive sport.

Arousing themselves, they sought for their rods, and the remnants of their provisions, but they were all gone.

“My hey!  Sammy, if somebody bas’nt taken advantage of us.  My watch too has gone, I declare.”

“And so’s mine!” exclaimed Sammy, feeling his empty fob.  “Vell, if this ain’t a go, never trust me.”

“I tell you vot it is, Sammy; some clever hartist or another has seen us sleeping, like the babes in the wood, and has drawn us at full length!”

THE BILL-STICKER.

What a mysterious being is the bill-sticker!  How seldom does he make himself visible to the eyes of the people.  Nay, I verily believe there are thousands in this great metropolis that never saw a specimen.  We see the effect, but think not of the cause.

He must work at his vocation either at night or at early dawn, before the world is stirring.

That he is an industrious being, and sticks to business, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt, for every dead-wall is made lively by his operations, and every hoard a fund of information—­in such type, too, that he who runs may read.  What an indefatigable observer he must be; for there is scarcely a brick or board in city or suburb, however newly erected, in highway or byeway, but is speedily adorned by his handiwork —­aye, and frequently too in defiance of the threatening—­“Bill-stickers, beware!”—­staring him in the face.  Like nature, he appears to abhor a vacuum.  When we behold the gigantic size of some of the modern arches, we are almost led to suppose that the bill-sticker