`` Where do you come from ? '' asked Tom . `` And why are YOU so sick and sad ? '' `` I come from the warm Carolinas , and the sandbanks fringed with pines ; where the great owl-rays leap and flap , like giant bats , upon the tide . But I wandered north and north , upon the treacherous warm gulf-stream , till I met with the cold icebergs , afloat in the mid ocean . So I got tangled among the icebergs , and chilled with their frozen breath . But the water-babies helped me from among them , and set me free again . And now I am mending every day ; but I am very sick and sad ; and perhaps I shall never get home again to play with the owl-rays any more . '' `` Oh ! '' cried Tom . `` And you have seen water-babies ? Have you seen any near here ? '' `` Yes ; they helped me again last night , or I should have been eaten by a great black porpoise . '' How vexatious ! The water-babies close to him , and yet he could not find one . And then he left the buoy , and used to go along the sands and round the rocks , and come out in the night -- like the forsaken Merman in Mr. Arnold 's beautiful , beautiful poem , which you must learn by heart some day -- and sit upon a point of rock , among the shining sea-weeds , in the low October tides , and cry and call for the water-babies ; but he never heard a voice call in return . And at last , with his fretting and crying , he grew quite lean and thin . But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow . It was not a water-baby , alas ! but it was a lobster ; and a very distinguished lobster he was ; for he had live barnacles on his claws , which is a great mark of distinction in lobsterdom , and no more to be bought for money than a good conscience or the Victoria Cross .
Tom had never seen a lobster before ; and he was mightily taken with this one ; for he thought him the most curious , odd , ridiculous creature he had ever seen ; and there he was not far wrong ; for all the ingenious men , and all the scientific men , and all the fanciful men , in the world , XXXXX all the old German bogy-painters into the bargain , could never invent , if all their wits were boiled into one , anything so curious , and so ridiculous , as a lobster .
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