No mention of boned sprats, or snails in aspic, calves' foot jelly, iced humming birds, pickled edelweiss, or any of those things kept habitually in the cellars of families like ours.

Tremblingly he advanced up the aisle of the village church, leading his blushing and waddling bride, and took his place, looking like an exclamation point alongside a parenthesis, before the black-robed Priest, who speedily put an end to Miss STUBBS, and presented JACK with a female SPRAT.

For without this small but sapid fishwhatever he may really be, whether denizen of the Sardinian sea, immature Cornish pilchard, or mere plebeian sprat well oilednumbers of our fellow-men and fellow-women, with all the will in the world, might never raise a laugh.