"It must be a nice one, you who brag that you have never had a tackle in your hand."
"Don't interrupt me—I shall not teach them how to fish with tackle. You see, things are thus, that these lingerers are conservative as all rabble—"
"What language is this?" interrupted the girl again.
"Plain language! However! From indiscretion and conservatism these aboriginals go on undermining their own interests as fish eating mammals, and therefore the state must place them under guardians. The stromling—God bless the fish!—that constitutes the most important livelihood of these autochthones, threatens to come to an end. Certainly I don't care at all, if a few hundred ichthyophageus more or less increase or diminish a superfluous horde of people, it is completely Immaterial. But now they shall live since the Academy of Agriculture wishes it, and therefore I shall hinder them from fishing their scanty supply. Is this acknowledged logic?"
"It is inhuman, but you are made of material for a hangman!"
"For this reason I have on my own accord, without asking for the decoration of Vasa or any kind of thanks, found out a new means of sustenance which shall replace the old, for even if the stromling should shoal for half a man's age after the fishermen have emigrated, still this means of sustenance is threatened by a competition, which after a hundred years of rest has again arisen more formidable than ever. Do you know that the herring will return to the coast of Bohus in the fall?"
"No, I haven't had any letter from them for a long time!"
"They do so at any rate. Therefore we must stop the stromling fishing and fish for salmon instead."
"Salmon? In the depth of the sea?"
"Yes! It shall be found there, although I haven't seen it. Yet you shall find it out!"