little oyster,--oh, so sick! This pained her parents very much. They did
not know what to do. They took her travelling; they gave her into the care
of the eel for electric treatment; they sent her to the Gulf Stream for
warm baths,--they tried everything, but to no avail. The sick little
oyster remained a sick little oyster, and there was an end of it.

At last one day,--one cruel, fatal day,--a horrid, fierce-looking machine
was poked down from the surface of the water far above, and with slow but
intrepid movement began exploring every nook and crevice of the oyster
village. There was not a family into which it did not intrude, nor a home
circle whose sanctity it did not ruthlessly invade. It scraped along the
great mossy rock; and lo! with a monstrous scratchy-te-scratch, the
mother-oyster and the father-oyster and hundreds of other oysters were
torn from their resting-places and borne aloft in a very jumbled and very
frightened condition by the impertinent machine. Then down it came again,
and the sick little oyster was among the number of those who were seized
by the horrid monster this time. She found herself raised to the top of
the sea; and all at once she was bumped in a boat, where she lay, puny and
helpless, on a huge pile of other oysters. Two men were handling the
fierce-looking machine. A little boy sat in the stern of the boat watching
the huge pile of oysters. He was a pretty little boy, with bright eyes and
long tangled hair. He wore no hat, and his feet were bare and brown.

"What a funny little oyster!" said the boy, picking up the sick little
oyster; "it is no bigger than my thumb, and it is very pale."

"Throw it away," said one of the men. "Like as not it is bad and not fit
to eat."

"No, keep it and send it out West for a Blue Point," said the other