The throng of visitors here at first detracted their sight from the wall of fish and wonders of the sea around them.
"Oh," said Aunt when she looked about, "I nearly have to gasp to make sure I'm not at the bottom of the sea. Just look at them fish swimming around on both sides of you."
"Well I feel sorry for these poor fish, they look so tired," said Fanny, "but it's very evident they can't keep lively all the time."
One of the big scaly-backed tarpons in the fountain was fanning his tail and moving slowly through the water. On the railing at the edge of the pool sat a tired man with a baby hanging over his arm. If the tarpon had stuck his nose out of the water he could have grabbed the man by the coat-tail and pulled him backward. The mother was standing a few feet away. She turned around and saw two beady eyes shining up through the water.
"Hold tight to that child," she said. "If you ever drop him that big pike would gobble him right up."
"He don't eat babies," replied the husband, calmly. "Besides, it ain't a pike; it's a sturgeon."
"Well, he looks awful mean, anyway." The husband, merely to reassure her, moved a few feet further along and let the baby lie over his shoulder and watch the little fish chase one another. The aisles were crowded full of people, who had found that a visit to the east end of the Fisheries building was almost as good as a dive to the bottom of the ocean.
It is in this place where you may stand with coral reefs and ring-tailed shells on either side and watch strange fish with spikes on their backs open their mouths and gape until each one looks like the letter O. The sea turtles stand on their heads and wave yellow flippers at the wide-eyed crowd, and a devil crab makes all the women shiver and pull the children away from the glass. In one aquarium there are so many catfish that they make the water cloudy.
In front of one of the cases there was a learned discussion. The label simply said "Anemone." On the rocks and shells were some things shaped like stars and mushrooms, except that they were moss-colored and had whiskers floating out in the water. "Annymone, what the dickens are they?" asked a man with a linen duster.
"Some kind of sea-weed, I believe," said an elderly gentleman in a patronizing manner.