Fishers of men

“ Once, when I could not reach the oar; and now, the second time, when these fishers turned a deaf ear to my cries. But this time I wept and roared like a wicked child, tearing up the turf with my nails and grinding my face in the earth. If a wish would kill men, those two fishers would never have seen morning ”

“ He Fishers made Fishers of men;
Where (which is in no other game)
A man may fish and praise his name.
The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon him here,
Blest Fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that he on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those
Whom he to follow him hath chose.
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ In short, he settled it wisely that the fishers of fish must yield to the habits of fish, which can not be corrected; but the fishers of men (who can live without catching them) need not be up to all their hours, but may take them reasonably. ”

“ and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes -- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education -- make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness -- hunters as well as fishers of men. ”

“ Fishers have their loves and joys and sorrows; birth and marriage and death come to them as to others. They have the same share of God’s love, the same Bible, the same hope of eternal life, that the richest men and women have. It is enough.”
“And hard lives have their compensations, David. Doubtless the fisherman’s life has its peculiar blessings?”
“It has. The fisher’s life is as free from temptation as a life can be. He has to trust God a great deal ”

“ Peter and his brother, “Follow me, and I will make [78] you fishers of men,” and no doubt this will sufficiently explain many old Christian paintings or sculptures in which the fish appears. Taking this idea for our guide, we can understand why a man angling and catching a fish should find a place on the walls of a church, whether above ground or below. ”

“ But if a ship went, say from Townsville to the Solomons or the New Hebrides, or Tombarra, Melapheelee and Miau, to fish for men, and returned, it may be, to Mackay within less than three months, bringing a hundred copies of the article in prime condition, then the fishers of men would clear at least £1,500; and if, having five ships of the same carrying capacity, making three voyages in the year with like success, then the fishers of men would make an absolutely clear gain of twenty-two thousand five-hundred pounds sterling. ”

“ The life of the fisherman is the most hard that any human toilers have to endure. Violence from the wind and waves, and pelting from firestones out of the sky are their daily portion; the great beasts that dwell in the seas hunt them with savage persistence, and it is a rare day when at least some one of the fishers’ guild fails to come home to answer the tally. ”

“ If you can stand a few hours of talk from an old smacksman you may hear a sombre litany of horror. Those fishers are, physically, the flower of our race, and many of them have the noblest moral qualities. ”

“ The article which makes skill in fishing a virtue worthy of being compensated in the other world, does not disfigure the salutary and consoling dogma of the immortality of the soul, and that of future rewards and punishments, so much as one is at first tempted to think; for if we reflect a little, we shall discover that the skilful fisherman, in laboring for himself, labors also for society; he is a useful citizen, who contributes, as much as lies in his power, to avert from his fellow-men the scourge of famine ”

“ The fish must be caught, but caught in such a manner that those who shoot their trawls for them catch other things besides—a wild roughness of bearing, a defiance of civilized instincts, a sense of outlawed and neglected life that brings with it a fixed conviction of social immunity. “I’m a fisherman myself, sir,” a man once said to me; “and I’ll allow that there are many well-mannered, sober, steady men among us; but, taking us all round, you’ll not find a coarser set of human beings in the world ”

“ Incomprehensible as it may seem, to his simple intellect the fisherman's art was a whole system of morality, a guide for every-day life, an education, a gospel. It was all any poor mortal man, woman, or child, needed in this world to make him or her happy, useful, good. ”

“ I am going to make these chaps work the fishery, and I don't want a potential murder leader among them. That wouldn't do at all. Besides, they must be shown at once their position in the scheme of things, and that position is laborers working for decent pay, but under a strong hand. Besides, all these fellows have murder on their conscience—or the thing, whatever it is, that serves for their conscience. That will always make them nervous and distrustful of white men. ”

“ As they approached the fishing beach they could see the enemy scuttering about in alarm. Fellows came out of the tents, shaded their eyes for a second, and then darted off into the grove. In less than a minute not a soul was in sight.
"There'll be no fighting," said Schumer as the boat came to the beach, and they sprang out. "Floyd, you stay here with the men and I'll take Mountain Joe up to the wood edge and have a palaver. I'll leave my gun with you so they may see we've come for peace, not war. They are sure to be peeping and spying from the trees." ”

“ The two men on the beach sat smoking and watching the schooner as she rode to her anchor, with a single light showing. The Kanaka crew, whom Schumer had always kept apart from the labor men, were on deck, and their forms could be seen indistinctly in the starlight as they lounged about, smoking and yarning. A fellow was fishing over the after rail, and now and then one could see a splash in the water and a streak of silver, as a groper was hauled up. ”

“ In this domain, removed from the haunts of men and far away from the noise and dust of their turmoil and strife, the fishing that can fully delight the heart of the true fisherman is found; and here in its enjoyment, those who fish are led, consciously or unconsciously, to a quiet but distinct recognition of a power greater than man’s, and a goodness far above human standards. ”

“ They are letting the rhythm of water and sky lull them into a sleep—a surcease from living. This is a very poetical thing for a hundred battered-looking men to attempt. Yet life may be as intimidating to honest, unimaginative ones as to their self-styled superiors.
There are many types fishing. But all of them look soiled. Idlers, workers, unhappy ones—they come to forget, to let the agate eye of the lake stare them into a few hours of oblivion. ”

“ Firstly, neither Schumer nor Hakluyt might be murderers in an active sense. Very few men are capable—God be thanked—of taking a fellow man's life in cold blood with their own hands. Schumer was without doubt a man of sensibility and parts. Hakluyt, though without parts or sensibility, was not of the active type of scoundrel. Both of these men might be capable of planning the destruction of another man, but neither would be likely to do the work himself. ”

“ Hunters and Fishers tabooed.—In savage society the hunter and the fisherman have often to observe rules of abstinence and to submit to ceremonies of purification of the same sort as those which are obligatory on the warrior and the manslayer ”

“ I knew the peculiarities of fishermen as a class, and the effects of this special branch of their profession on their character: I had seen them pursuing their employments amid the sublime of nature, and had occasionally taken a share in their work; and, further, I was acquainted with not a few antique traditions of the fishermen of other ages, in which, as in the narratives of most seafaring men, there mingled with a certain amount of real incident, curious snatches of the supernatural. ”

“ The Southern Cross carried a brass cannonade for saluting purposes, and now he heard Schumer giving orders for it to be loaded.
I have said that the Southern Cross was a topsail schooner, and at this moment the crowd of laborers away out at the fishing ground had their attention drawn by the movement going on upon the rigging of the foremast; men were swarming up, and a fellow was out on the yard—he looked at that distance like a fly against the blue. ”

“ As they rowed across the lagoon, passing under the stern of the Southern Cross, they could hear the songs brought by the wind across the water from the fishing camp. Not a sound came from the schooner, where the trapped men were no doubt fumbling in the fo'c'sle for some means of escape, and not a sound came from the Domain, where the whole crew, anchor watch included, were fast asleep. As they came alongside the Domain, Cardon hailed her, and a fellow rousing on deck came to the bulwark rail, rubbing his eyes. He cast a rope, and the boat was made fast. ”

“ Some people have conscientious scruples about fishing. I respect them. I had them once myself. Wantonly to destroy, for mere sport, the innocent life, in lake and river, seemed to me a cruelty and a shame. But people must fish. Now, then, how shall your theory and practice be harmonized? Practice can't yield. ”

“ The fisherman, brought into constant and close contact with the wild powers of that Nature from which he with hardship wrings a bare subsistence, has a blinder faith in the ancient ways than other men. ”

“ He was no longer a dweller of the earth, but had become a citizen of that boundless country that lay beneath the waves. The fisherman was completely changed in form. His hair was sea green and trailed behind him through the water. His shoulders broadened, and his limbs took the shape and use of a fish's tail. He had never known such freedom and joy as now when he spent whole days doing nothing but following the ebb and flow of the tides and learning the use of his newly found fins as a bird tries its wings on first leaving the nest. ”

“ The fishermen themselves were a fine, sturdy, independent class of men, skilful seamen, and all-round fishermen, able to turn their hands to any form of fishing, whether lining, trawling, or drifting. ”

“ Fishing is so peaceful an industry, and is generally carried on by so poor and so hardworking a class of men, that it is likened, in the territorial waters of the enemy's country, to the class of husbandmen who gather the fruits of the earth for their livelihood. The examples and practice generally followed establish this humane and beneficent exception as an international rule, and this rule may be considered as adopted by customary law and by all civilized nations.' Testa, pt. ”

“ If I give a certain share of my catch to his holiness, I may sail the Nile from the sea to the cataract. A fisherman is like a fish or a wild goose; but an earth-tiller is like a tree which nourishes lords with its fruit and can never escape but only squeaks when overseers spoil the bark on it. ”

“ When you ask the fishermen why they do not manage better for themselves at the present demand for fish, they explain how helpless they are in the hands of what they call ‘the big men.’ Some fishermen at Aldborough, who have a boat of their own, told my brother that one season, when the sea seemed full of herrings, they saw in the newspapers how dear they were in London, and resolved to make a venture on their own account ”

“ The fisherman, too,—what an inexhaustible treasury of wonder lies at his feet, in the subaqueous world of the commonest mountain burn! All the laws which mould a world are there busy, if he but knew it, fattening his trout for him, and making them rise to the fly, by strange electric influences, at one hour rather than at another. ”

“ I should not care to be hunted for the life in shallow waters by a man who knows every bank and pothole of them, even if I had not killed his friends the week before. Being nearly all fishermen they discuss their work in terms of fish, and put in their leisure fishing overside, when they sometimes pull up ghastly souvenirs. ”

“ And when it was day the young Fisherman rose up and said to his Soul, 'I will bind my hands that I may not do thy bidding, and close my lips that I may not speak thy words, and I will return to the place where she whom I love has her dwelling. Even to the sea will I return, and to the little bay where she is wont to sing, and I will call to her and tell her the evil I have done and the evil thou hast wrought on me.'
And his Soul tempted him and said, 'Who is thy love, that thou shouldst return to her? The world has many fairer than she is. ”

“ There was scarcely a trace of morning bank in the east, and the light, now strengthening rapidly, showed the great trapezium of canvas slatting to the faint and favorable wind. Then the foresail took the breeze, dusky forms swarming on the jib boom were casting the gaskets off the jib, now the men on deck were hauling at the jib halyards, and just as a horse answers to the pull of the bit, the Southern Cross veered round to the pressure of the sail, while the voice of Schumer came again, ordering the anchor to be hove up. ”

“ We certainly have nothing in common with those who fish for a livelihood, [Pg 166] unless it be a desire to catch fish. We have, in point of fact, no closer relationship than this with the murderously inclined, whose only motive in fishing is to make large catches, and whose sole pleasure in the pursuit is the gratification of a greedy propensity. Nevertheless we, and those with whom we have so little sympathy, are by a sort of unavoidable law of gravitation classed together in the same fraternity, and called fishermen. ”