On Art and Sardines—But More Especially Sardines.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 2, 11 January 1908, Page 21

On Art and Sardines—But More Especially Sardines.

There is no pleasanter, sweeter, healthier spot than the Backs of the Colleges. Get into your canoe at Silver Street. Put into that canoe: — 1. The cushions of three other boats. 2. Two pipes (in order than one may be always cool), and tobacco. 3. One dozen boxes of matches, in order that one box may be always handy. 4. The spiritual part of your nature, which will not take up much room, but is useful to talk to. But do not take another man with you. I may frankly say', my reader, that you are absolutely tne only man I know who has the keen appreciativeness, the capacity' for quiet meditation, the dreaminess, the listlessness, the abominable laziness, that a Canadian eanoe requires. The man who would attempt to get pace on in a Canadian canoe probably would analyse the want of harmony’ in the death-song which a swan never sings —or worse than that. The man who would try to make a Canadian canoe go wnere he wanted would be angry,because the inspiration of a poet does not always disappoint the expectations of a commonplace nature. Y'ou must go where the boat wants to go; and that depends upon wind and current, and on the number of othei’ boats that run into you, and the way they do it, and the language of their occupants. What a beautiful thing it is to lie at full length on the cushions, and see the sky through the trees —only the angels see the trees through the sky. My' little boat has taken me round to the back of Queen’s, and stopped just short of that little bridge. It is all old and familiar. The fowls coo as they cooed yesterday. The same two men in the same tub have the same little joke with one another in getting under the low bridge. Farther up there is precisely’ the same number of flies on the same dead and putrescent animal. My boat went up to look at it, but could not stay. The recoil sent it back here; and here, apparently, it means to stop. You may take my word for it that a Canadian canoe knows a thing or two. I wish I could paint the song of the birds and set the beauty of the trees to music. But there is a prejudice against it. Music is masculine. Art is faminine, and Poetry is their child. The baby Poetry will play with anyone; but its parents observe the division of sexes. That is why Nature is so decent and pleasant. 1 would treat her to some poetry if I did but know the names of things. For instance, I have no idea what that bird is, and asparagus is the only’ tree which I recognise at sight Oh, confound the boat! I wish I’d tied it up. It’s just taken the painter between its teeth, and whipped sharp round and bolted. Woa, my lass, steady! It’s a little fresh, you see, not having been out before this week. 1 beg your pardon, sir—entirely my fault. 1 don’t think he need have been so offensively rude about it. It’s not as if I’d upset him. A fish jumped. 1 know not the names of fishes, but it was not salmon steak or filleted soles, of that I’m sure. My boat goes waggling its silly old bows as if it knew but would not tell me. Can it have been a sardine? No, the sardine is a foreign fish. It comes from Sardinia, where the great Napoleon was exiled, as likely as not. It cannot swim in fresh water, but is brought to us in tins, which are packed in erates on trucks. It comes en huiles, in fact. Hence the inscription. 1 cannot help thinking of the sad story of those two historical sardines—a buck-sardine and a doe-sardine —that lived on opposite sides of an island, which happened to be in the Aegean Sea. They loved one another tlearly; but they never, never told their love. He had no self-confidence, and she had too

much self-respect. They met but cnee before their last day. It was at a place of worship in the neighbourhood of the Goodwin Sands. She caught his eye, and the umpire gave it out, and he had to go out. “Am I a hymn?” he said, just a little bitterly, "that 1 should be given out?” He was not a hymn, but he was a he, and had a tender heart. All day’ long he sat on a stone, tail uppermost, and felt his position acutely. “Ah, if she only knew!” he sighed to himself. And she was the life and soul of a select party in the roaring Adriatic. She quipped, and quirked; she became »o brilliant that the surface of the sea grew phosphorescent. And no one guessed that beneath that calm exterior the worm was gnawing at the heart of the poor doe-sardine. No one would have been so foolish. For is it not well known that when a worm and a fish meet it’s mostly the fish that does the gnawing? Still, the doe-sardine did feel a trifle weary. Why' might she not tell her love? Why must she suffer? "Il faut souffrir pour etre belle,” as the gong said when tin? butler hit it. About this time a young man, who was dancing attendance on Queen Cleopatra, happened to be pasing on a P.N.O. steamer. This was in the republican era, when Duilius introduced the P.N.O. line. The Carthaginian merchants, with a keen eye for business, always used P.T.O. steamers, which were insured by far beyond their value by unsuspecting offices in the less tortured parts of Spain. These wild tribes did not know what P.T.O. signified, but the steamers did; so did the crews of low Teutonic slaves, who were thus saved all the worry ami,expense of burial. But let us return to our sardines. The young man on the P.N.O. steamer was reading a novel of Ouida’s, and. misliking the book, he flung it into the ocean. The attendants of the doe-sardine brought it to their mistress, and she read it with avidity, and after that she became veryelegant, and very French. She sat in the rose-tinted boudoir, with a sad smile on her gills, dreaming of her love. “Ah!” she murmured, faintly, s Si vous saviez.” She could not sleep! No sooner had she closed her eyes than she was haunted by’ an awful vision of a man soldering up tins of fish. The doctors prescribed narcotics. When she had taken the morphia of the doctors she had no more fear of the dream. But she took too much of it. She took all there was of it. Then the doctors prescribed coral, and she took any amount of coral. She would have taken in a reef, but the auctioneer was away for his Easter holidays, and consequently there were no sales. So she took in washing instead. Then, and not till then, she knew that she must die. A fishing net was passing, and a conductor stood on the step. “ ’Ere ye are. lyedy! ” he called out. " Hall the way - one penny! Benk, Benk, Gritty Benk! ” He used to say this so quickly that he was called the lightning conductor. She entered the net, and as she did so she saw the buck-sardine seated there. She staggered, and nearly fell! “ Moind the step, lyedy,” eried the conductor. And so they were brought to the gritty bank of the Mediterranean, and received temporary' accommodation without sureties or publicity—on note-of-hand simply. As they came in with the tide they were naturally paid into the current account. They’ were preserved in the same tin, and served on the same piece of buttered toast. As the man consumed the bodies of the buck sardine anti the doe sartline the two spiritualties of the two fishes walked down the empyrean, and cast two shadows. When he hail gul plied down the last mouthful the two shadows melted into one. So they found peace at last; and I do not refer to buttered toast. But the queerest part of it is that thev were both sprats. — From “In a Canadian Canoe, and Other Stories” (“Harper’s Magazine”), by Barrie Pain,