CHEAP OR DEAR FISH? [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Your salmon discussion has only just caught my eye. If the reward for the production of an indenture containing the limitation as to salmon dinners for apprentices had been offered twenty-five years ago, and I or certain friends of mine had known of it, it would, perhaps, have been claimed. Death, fire, neglect, and other things have now done their ordinary work, and " what the soldier said " is not evidence ; but my wife, in her girlhood, was very familiar with such an indenture. It was a family document, and used to be fetched out of an old box, and read to or by the guests, when a certain ancestor who was concerned in the deed was talked of, or the price of salmon. The ancient house in the City in which this used to happen was quitted in trouble and in precipitation, and is long ago pulled down ; but the topic was table-talk, and I used to hear of it from two or three people in connection with certain old portraits and old books, not at all as a disputable thing, or as if the clause in the indenture were a very great curiosity. I have no more doubt about it than that I now hold a pen. As to salmon in the City, see " Liber Albus " and Mr. Riley's " Introduction " to it. Might not a stingy master have half-starved his apprentice on bad, cart-borne fish ? I am " not a great Drawcansir " in such matters, but we all used to suppose that the salmon-limitation clause came from ante- Reformation days, or thereabouts, and was occasionally kept up by old fashioned lawyers in later times,—perhaps to make folios, after the manner of the craft.—I am, Sir, &c.,
SALMO SALAR.
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