Walking-Stick Papers | Page 6

one could wish--in its kind; and
from the home of classic American literature comes The New England
Tradesman and Grocer. And so on. At the place alone where we went
to press twenty-seven trade journals were printed every week, from one
for butchers to one for bankers.
The Fish Industries Gazette--Ah, yes! For some reason not clear
(though it is an engaging thing, I think) the word "gazette" is the great
word among the titles of trade journals. There are The Jewellers'
Gazette and The Women's Wear Gazette and The Poulterers' Gazette
(of London), and The Maritime Gazette (of Halifax), and other gazettes
quite without number. This word "gazette" makes its appeal, too,
curiously enough, to those who christen country papers; and trade
journals have much of the intimate charm of country papers. The
"trade" in each case is a kind of neighbourly community, separated in
its parts by space, but joined in unity of sympathy. "Personals" are a
vital feature of trade papers. "Walter Conner, who for some time has
conducted a bakery and fish market at Hudson, N.Y., has removed to
Fort Edward, leaving his brother Ed in charge at the Hudson place of
business."
The Fish Industries Gazette, as I say, was one of several in its field, in
friendly rivalry with The Oyster Trade and Fisherman and The Pacific
Fisheries. It comprized two departments: the fresh fish and oyster
department, and myself. I was, as an editorial announcement said at the
beginning of my tenure of office, a "reorganisation of our salt, smoked,
and pickled fish department." The delectable, mellow spirit of the
country paper, so removed from the crash and whirr of metropolitan
journalism, rested in this, too, that upon the Gazette I did practically
everything on the paper except the linotyping. Reporter, editorial writer,
exchange editor, make-up man, proof-reader, correspondent,

advertisement solicitor, was I.
As exchange editor, did I read all the papers in the English language in
eager search of fish news. And while you are about the matter, just find
me a finer bit of literary style evoking the romance of the vast wastes of
the moving sea, in Stevenson, Defoe, anywhere you please, than such a
news item as this: "Capt. Ezra Pound, of the bark Elnora, of Salem,
Mass., spoke a lonely vessel in latitude this and longitude that,
September 8. She proved to be the whaler Wanderer, and her captain
said that she had been nine months at sea, that all on board were well,
and that he had stocked so many barrels of whale oil."
As exchange editor was it my business to peruse reports from Eastport,
Maine, to the effect that one of the worst storms in recent years had
destroyed large numbers of the sardine weirs there. To seek fish recipes,
of such savoury sound as those for "broiled redsnapper," "shrimps
bordelaise," and "baked fish croquettes." To follow fishing conditions
in the North Sea occasioned by the Great War. To hunt down jokes of
piscatory humour. "The man who drinks like a fish does not take kindly
to water.--Exchange." To find other "fillers" in the consular reports and
elsewhere: "Fish culture in India," "1800 Miles in a Dory," "Chinese
Carp for the Philippines," "Americans as Fish Eaters." And, to use a
favourite term of trade papers, "etc., etc." Then to "paste up" the
winnowed fruits of this beguiling research.
As editorial writer, to discuss the report of the commission recently
sent by congress to the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, to report on the
condition of our national herd of fur seals; to discuss the official
interpretation here of the Government ruling on what constitutes
"boneless" codfish; to consider the campaign in Canada to promote
there a more popular consumption of fish, and to brightly remark
apropos of this that "a fish a day keeps the doctor away"; to review the
current issue of The Journal of the Fisheries Society of Japan,
containing leading articles on "Are Fishing Motor Boats Able to
Encourage in Our Country" and "Fisherman the Late Mr. H.
Yamaguchi Well Known"; to combat the prejudice against dogfish as
food, a prejudice like that against eels, in some quarters eyed askance

as "calling cousins with the great sea-serpent," as Juvenal says; to call
attention to the doom of one of the most picturesque monuments in the
story of fish, the passing of the pleasant and celebrated old Trafalgar
Hotel at Greenwich, near London, scene of the famous Ministerial
white-bait dinners of the days of Pitt; to make a jest on an exciting idea
suggested by some medical man that some of the features of a
Ritz-Carlton Hotel, that is, baths, be introduced into the fo'c's'les of
Grand Banks fishing vessels; to keep an eye on the activities of our
Bureau of Fisheries; to hymn a praise to