THE CODFISH.
THIS tropical bird very seldom wings his way so far west as Wyoming. He loves the sea breezes and humid atmosphere of the Atlantic ocean, and when isolated in this mountain clime, pines for his native home.
The codfish cannot sing, but is prized for his beautiful plumage and seductive odor.
The codfish of commerce is devoid of digestive apparatus, and is more or less permeated with salt.
Codfish on toast is not as expensive as quail on toast.
The codfish ball is made of the shattered remains of the adult codfish, mixed with the tropical Irish potato of commerce.
The codfish has a great wealth of glad, unfettered smile. When he laughs at anything, he has that same wide waste of mirth and back teeth that Mr. Talmage has. The Wyoming codfish is generally dead. Death, in most cases, is the result of exposure and loss of appetite. No one can look at the codfish of commerce, and not shed a tear. Far from home, with his system filled with salt, while his internal economy is gone, there is an air of sadness and homesickness and briny hopelessness about him that no one can see unmoved.
It is in our home life, however, that the codfish makes himself felt and remembered. When he enters our household, we feel his all pervading presence, like the perfume of wood violets, or the seductive odor of a dead mouse in the piano.
Friends may visit us and go away, to be forgotten with the advent of a new face; but the cold, calm, silent corpse of the codfish cannot be forgotten. Its chastened influence permeates the entire ranch. It steals into the parlor, like an unbidden guest, and flavors the costly curtains and the high-priced lambrequins. It enters the dark closet and dallies lovingly with your swallowtail coat. It goes into your sleeping apartment, and makes its home in your glove box and your handkerchief case.
That is why we say that it is a solemn thing to take the life of a codfish. We would not do it. We would pass him by, a thousand times, no matter how ferocious he might be, rather than take his life, and have our once happy home haunted forever by his unholy presence.