DEATH OF A VALUABLE MEMBER OF SOCIETY.

The Talking Fish is dead! The event is sad enough to strike every Member of Parliament dumb with apprehensions of his own future doom. This sudden demise is greatly to be regretted, as there were hopes of the Fish being able to attend the Congress about to be held in Paris. Doubtlessly he would have spoken as much to the purpose as any other official there. He would have said “Pa” to the representative of the Holy Father, and “Ma” to the old woman who does duty for the Emperor of Austria, and what more could have been wanted? If a question had arisen as to the “balance of Europe,” he could have pointed to his own scales, and proved how worthy he was to hold either the one or the other by balancing himself as upright as any judge (an English one, of course – who ever heard of any other that was upright?) right on the tip of his tail. He has been disappointed, also, in not having been invited to dine with Lord Cowley, who, on this occasion,- and this occasion only – might have been able to boast of having had Fish for dinner; but all these wonderful things, and many more, have been abruptly checked in their career by the untimely decease of this duosyllabic wonder, who, when he met you, did not accost you with, “I have just who words to say to you,” and then, like too many talkative monsters in human form, detain you by the button-hole for at least a couple of hours. He was eminently a fish and not a bore. He said his two words, and no more, simply because he did not know more than two. His tongue was always dancing a pas de deux (the paternal and maternal salutations above alluded to), and you could never persuade him to execute any other pas, or “Ma” either. He must have been a good son, this Talking Fish, for you never could get him to talk upon any other subject but that of his parents, In fact, he was endeared to his master from the fact of his pay-rental propensities, which he would exhibit more or less strongly at every new place he went to.

The loss of the Talking Fish will be largely felt in the circle in which he moved,- by which we mean, the large tub in which he was in the habit of taking his daily rounds. According to the information we have received from our usual authentic sources, the Talking Fish is to be buried, not in Westminster Abbey, nor St. Paul’s, but in Billinsgate Market. His epitaph, borrowed from the ducal hatchments, is to be simply, “In Sealo Quies.” Mr. Chisholm Anstey has offered his services as chief mourner; but it is expected that the compliment will be paid, par preference, to Mr. Gladstone, not only because his “talking” powers are fully equal to those of his loquacious rival, but also because he is more closely connected with the Seals of Office, to which, it is well known, the lamented deceased had the ambition of aspiring.

We need not state that the Talking Fish died deeply regretted by his keepers, who will feel his loss most deeply in that part where losses are generally felt by persons the most deeply,- viz., the breeches pocket.

What complaint the Talking Fish had, beyond receiving every now and then a scanty supply of flounders, we cannot state; but we understand that he took his final leap from this world into the next in his rash efforts to combine in his own person the Seal and Die Department. He succeeded eventually, and but too well, as the fact of his own dying painfully testified. It was his first, as it will be his last attempt in that line, though it must be confessed that he has succeeded in making a tolerably deep impression with it.

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