ever, his fish were really great curiosities; and when he
had exhibited them all over the town, set them out in all lights,
praised their perfections, and taken immense pains to conceal his
impatience and ill temper, he, at length, contrived to sell them all,
and get exactly fourteen shillings for them, and no more.

"Now, I'll tell you what, Tom Turner," said he to himself, "I've found
out this afternoon, and I don't mind your knowing it,--that every one of
those customers of yours was your master. Why! you were at the beck of
every man, woman, and child that came near you;--obliged to be in a good
temper, too, which was very aggravating."

"True, Tom," said the man in green, starting up in his path. "I knew you
were a man of sense; look you, you are all workingmen; and you must all
please your customers. Your master was your customer; what he bought of
you was your work. Well, you must let the work be such as will please
the customer."

"All workingmen? How do you make that out?" said Tom, chinking the
fourteen shillings in his hand. "Is my master a workingman; and has he a
master of his own? Nonsense!"

"No nonsense at all; he works with his head, keeps his books, and
manages his great mills. He has many masters; else why was he nearly
ruined last year?"

"He was nearly ruined because he made some newfangled kinds of patterns
at his works, and people would not buy them," said Tom. "Well, in a way
of speaking, then, he works to please his masters, poor fellow! He is,
as one may say, a fellow-servant, and plagued with very awkward masters.
So I should not mind his being my master, and I think I'll go and tell
him so."

"I would, Tom," said the man in green. "Tell him you have not been able
to better yourself, and you have no objection now to dig up the
asparagus bed."

So Tom trudged home to his wife, gave her the money he had earned, got
his old master to take him back, and kept a profound secret his
adventures with the man in green.

_Jean Ingelow._

[Illustration:]

"Every minnow in the stream (they are very scarce, mind you) has a
silver tail." Here we have a group of words in parenthesis. Read the
sentence aloud several times, _omitting_ the group in parenthesis. Now
read the _whole_ sentence, keeping in mind the fact that the words in
parenthesis are not at all important,--that they are merely thrown in by
way of explanation. You notice that you have read the words in
parenthesis in a _lower ton