I found, too, in that afternoon walk, some curiously shaped splinters of jasper, which at first did not seem very well adapted to any purpose; and yet, although mere fragments, they had every appearance of having been purposely shaped, and not of accidental resemblances to a hook or sickle blade. When I got home I read that perfect specimens, mine being certain pieces of the same form, had been found off in Norway; and Professor Nilsson, who has carefully studied the whole subject, says they are fish-hooks made of flint, the largest being bone. Hooks of exactly the same pattern as these really have been found within half a mile of the little valley I worked in that afternoon.
The fish-hooks found in Norway have been thought to be best adapted for, and really used in, capturing cod-fish in salt water and perch and pike in inland lakes. The broken hooks I found were fully as large; and so the little brook that now ripples down the valley, when a large stream, must have had a good many big fishes in it, or the stone-age fishermen would not have brought their fishing-hooks, and have lost them, along this remnant of a larger stream.
But it must not be supposed that only children in this by-gone era did the fishing for their tribe. Just as the men captured the larger game, so they took the bigger fishes; but it is scarcely probable that the boys who waded the little brooks with bows and arrows would remain content with that, and, long before they were men, doubtless they were adepts in catching the more valuable fishes that abounded, in Indian times, in all our rivers.
So, fishing, I think, was another way in which the stone-age children played.
THE MIST
By Carl Ewald
The sun had just gone down.
The frog was croaking his "good-night," which lasted so long that there seemed no end to it. The bee was creeping into its hive, and little children were crying because they had to go to bed. The flower was closing up its petals and bowing its head; the bird was tucking its bill under its wing; and the stag was laying himself down to rest in the tall, soft grass in the glade of the wood.
From the village church the bells were ringing for sunset, and when that was over the old clerk went home. On his way he had a little chat or two with the people who were out for an evening stroll, or were standing before their gate and smoking a pipe till they bade him good-night and shut the door.
Then it grew quite quiet, and the darkness fell. There was a light in the parson's house, and there was one also in the doctor's. But the farmers' houses were dark, because in summer-time the farmers get up so early that they must go early to bed.