Look out for them Lobsters.
Deacon ——, who resides in a pleasant village inside of an hour's ride upon Fitchburg road, rejoices in a fondness for the long-tailed crustacea, vulgarly known as lobsters. And, from messes therewith fulminated, by some of our professors of gastronomics that we have seen, we do not attach any wonder at all to the deacon's penchant for the aforesaid shell-fish. The deacon had been disappointed several times by assertions of the lobster merchants, who, in their overwhelming zeal to effect a sale, had been a little too sanguine of the precise time said lobsters were caught and boiled; hence, after lugging home a ten pound specimen of the vasty deep, miles out into the quiet country, the deacon was often sorely vexed to find the lobster no better than it should be!
"Why don't you get them alive, deacon?" said a friend,—"get them alive and kicking, deacon; boil them yourself; be sure of their freshness, and have them cooked more carefully and properly."
"Well said," quoth the deacon; "so I can, for they sell them, I observe, near the depot,—right out of the boat. I'm much obliged for the notion."
The next visit of the good deacon to Boston,—as he was about to return home, he goes to the bridge and bargains for two live lobsters, fine, active, lusty-clawed fellows, alive and kicking, and no mistake!
"But what will I do with them?" says the deacon to the purveyor of the crustacea, as he gazed wistfully upon the two sprawling, ugly, green and scratching lobsters, as they lay before him upon the planks at his feet.
"Do with 'em?" responded the lobster merchant,—"why, bile 'em and eat 'em! I bet you a dollar you never ate better lobsters 'n them, nohow, mister!"
The deacon looked anxiously and innocently at the speaker, as much as to say—"you don't say so?"
"I mean, friend, how shall I get them home?"