No
idyl appeals so directly to modern feeling, I suspect, as does that of
the two fishermen and the dream of the golden fish. Go down to the
shore; you will find the old men still at their toil, the same
implements, the same poverty, the same sentiment for the heart. Often as
I look at them I recall the old words, while the goats hang their heads
over the scant herbage, and the blue sea breaks lazily and heavily on
the sands.
"Two fishers, on a time, two old men, together lay and slept; they had
strewn the dry sea-moss for a bed in their wattled cabin, and there lay
against the leafy wall. Beside them wore strewn the instruments of their
toilsome bands, the fishing-creels, the rods of reed, the hooks, the
sails bedraggled with sea-spoil, the lines, the weels, the lobster-pots
woven of rushes, the seines, two oars, and an old cobble upon props.
Beneath their heads was a scanty matting, their clothes, their sailors'
caps. Here was all their toil, here all their wealth. The threshold had
never a door nor a watch-dog. All things, all, to them seemed
superfluity, for Poverty was their sentinel; they had no neighbour by
them, but ever against their narrow cabin gently floated up the sea.
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